The Cadaverites
by ComsatAngel
Summary: Trying to find out the truth behind an alleged massacre and The Dark Children, the Third Doctor travels to a provincial Russian town in the Soviet Union in 1969. He is escorted by a UNIT officer. The pair find themselves trapped in a town under siege, fi
1. Chapter 1

**THE CADAVERITES** PROLOGUE 

The great starship swung into an orbit around the startingly beautiful blue planet, coasting high above the northern landmass, casting finicky electronic sensors at the continent, scanning and recording, noting and annotating.

'It seems suitable,' commented the Captain, nibbling nervously at a fingernail. The Senior, more experienced, merely cast a knowing eye over the readings. 'Ahum,' was his considered opinion.

'I mean, an environment the cargo could sustain,' added the Captain. 'Until expiration date.'

'Ahum,' commented the Senior. After reviewing and exploring the various worlds of this particular solar system, this particular world was indeed the last viable option for dropping the cargo they carried, given their fuel and time constraints.

'Nor do the natives seem able to interfere,' added the Captain. The Senior looked sideways at his superior.

'They seem quite able to interfere with each other,' he commented.

The Captain got a little snooty at this.

'Chemical explosives. Hardly what I would call the highest form of scientific endeavour, Senior One.'

The Senior kept his own counsel. The city below called "Constantinople" had been rendered different by chemical explosives recently, rendered from one religio-political entity to another, something called "Istanbul".

'No, sir. Hardly the highest,' he confirmed. 'Hardly able to interfere at all.'

'Give the Trans-Mat team the go-ahead, then,' said the Captain. 'And split the cargo up. Don't deliver them all to the same site.'

ONE 

Nickel Extraction Combine Number One

Trivelho

Pechenga Oblast

USSR

March 21st 1969

Evgeniy Klimentov checked the clock on the wall of his corrugated shack. Five minutes to ten. He checked his watch. Again, five minutes to ten. On cue – all the clocks were synchronised to Radio Moscow – the siren in the quarry sounded once, a long blast that sent mournful echoes winging round the slopes.

Donning a protective hat, he went to the door and opened it to lean out, looking into the quarry in the direction of the mine entrance. From here he could see the three men waiting below, safe in the lee of the big vehicle sheds, stnading in small circle of light cast by the lamps. One of them spotted the Chief Mining Engineer looking paternally down, and waved a helmet at him. Evgeniy waved back, allowing his attention to wander across the buildings and structures in the quarry. Nothing moved; excellent. The lights were still on, holding the bitter night at bay, and that was all to indicate the site still existed as a going concern.

The clatter of footsteps coming up the metal staircase to his shack, perched aloofly atop the worker's accomodation block, caused him to step fully outside the office. Karel, the Czech doctor, came into view, puffing up the steep risers and clutching the metal handrail.

'Whew! Evgeniy, you must be part mountain goat to work up here,' he said.

Deriving a wry amusement from the doctor's discomfort, Evgeniy remained silent. Personally, he thought the doctor would find it easier if he ate less and exercised more. For a doctor he was a terribly unhealthy fellow.

'Anyway, I came up here to get a better view.' The doctor's bald, pinkish face looked disappointed when he took in the view. 'Even if nothing seems to be happening.'

Evgeniy handed him a spare hat, hung up outside the office door.

'We shut down everything apart from the generating plant before blasting. Safety. The same reason we have you loitering around for tonight. Likewise, I don't allow anyone to go wandering about the quarry at times like these. If one of my beloved troglodytes got brained by flying rocks I'd never hear the end of it.'

The siren sounded three short bursts, indicating sixty seconds to go. Evgeniy leant on the railing along the balcony, aware of the doctor at his side. The seconds ticked away on his watch –

A muted, distant and vibrating thud came from both underground and the mine entrance; simultaneously every light in the quarry dimmed for a second before regaining normal brightness. Tired flurries of dust emerged wearily from the mine entrance, their egress dampened by tarpaulins hung in galleries below.

Evgeniy waved in acknowledgement to the inspection trio below. He ducked back inside his office, nodding to the doctor.

The samovar inside helped to keep the icy northern night at bay. Doctor Karel gratefully accepted a glass of tea, stirring in a teaspoon of jam to sweeten it.

'Bit of an anti-climax, that,' he murmured. Evgeniy laughed.

'What do you expect, a live version of the 1812 Overture! That blast was over a kilometre inside the mine, doctor, and about a hundred metres below the level of the quarry. Nice and muted is how we like it up here.'

Pouring a cup of tea for himself, he sipped the dark, hot drink reflectively. The doctor made an _ahh_ face, and was then struck by a new question.

'How long does the mine stay inert like this? Surely not for long, not with norms to meet.'

Evgeniy nodded in agreement.

'Those men you saw by the vehicle sheds have the unlovely job of inspecting the new gallery for structural safety. After waiting ten minutes to let dust settle and loose debris fall, they will walk to the blasting site and check it out. Gas masks, goggles, helmets, they need it all. They ought to report back here in about an hour, after which we'll get everything moving again.'

The two men played a desultory game of chess whilst Evgeniy waited for a telephone call from the inspectors. After forty-five minutes elapsed, a loud rap sounded on the door, and another man came in, without waiting to be asked. He had dark skin and a ferocious moustache, which he tugged.

'Evgeniy Sholokovitz. Doctor,' he said, by way of a greeting, bowing very slightly.

'What brings you up here, Avtandil?' asked Evgeniy, curious. The Georgian didn't mix very well with the local miners; looks, language, religion and temper all tended to clash. Still, he knew his stuff, which went a long way in Evgeniy's book to making him acceptable.

The Georgian tugged on his moustache again, a habit of his when nervous.

'To be honest, Evgeniy, I can't really say. A chill in the bones, maybe.' He shrugged ruefully. Being a hard-headed mining expert meant ignoring his Caucasian roots and all the superstitions that accompanied them, but tonight – tonight he felt an amorphous unease about the mine. 'And your inspectors have been gone a long time.'

Evgeniy checked the clock: ten to eleven. Not that long a time, given that they had to walk all the way underground to the newly-blasted gallery; no driving allowed until structural safety had been affirmed. He pursed his lips at Avtandil, then carried on with the chess game.

By half-past eleven, Evgeniy had pushed the game aside and was pacing the room. If anything had gone wrong underground, then the inspectors ought to have been able to call back on the emergency telephone network, with a phone every two hundred metres. No call back. Not even with such an unusually long inspection.

He ground his palms together.

'Damn it! If they knew it would take this long they ought to have rung back.'

Avtandil tugged one side of his moustache, then the other.

'Call out the Mine Rescue Team,' he suggested. Evgeniy gave the inspectors another five minutes, then did just that. Karel expected a frenzy of action and alarms, only to be disappointed once again when all Evgeniy did was ring the Accomodation Block and talk quietly to whoever answered. Avtandil went out onto the balcony to watch the dozen men who assembled wearing bright yellow jackets, helmets, gas masks, torches, gas detectors and special bronze non-sparking picks. Several men carried folding canvas stretchers. Karel came out to watch, too, shivering in the transition from hot inside to cold outside.

'Should I go with them?' he asked Evgeniy, who came out to wave the team off, led by the stocky figure of Konstantin.

'Don't be a mutton-head,' said the engineer, shortly. 'How much experience do you have in mines? None. Exactly. So be sensible and hang around here.'

Privately Evgeniy didn't hold much hope for the inspection team. To be absent without communication for that long bespoke serious, _very_ serious, trouble.

Only minutes afterwards, the phone in his office rang: Konstantin of the MRT doing the standard check-in.

Evegeniy went outside to the two men getting cold on the balcony.

'Nothing to report from the rescuers.'

The phone rang every ten minutes or so after that, still with nothing to report. Finally the MRT were nearing the newly-blasted gallery and Konstantin rang again.

'The lights are out down here, Chief. The dust has settled, and there seems to be a hole in the gallery wall. Subsidence, I would – hey! Did you see that!' which came only faintly to Evgeniy's ears, as Konstantin must have been shouting to the other team members. 'Chief, they might still be alive, I just saw movement in that cavern. Get a light –' and there came a silence from the other end.

'Hello? Konstantin?' said Evgeniy, puzzled. The connection hadn't gone dead, he could still hear the buzz of an open line.

'HOLY MOTHER!' shrieked Konstantin, the connection broke abruptly and Evgeniy never heard another word from him again.

Avtandil came in from outside, looking pale. He saw the stunned chief engineer looking at the phone as if it had bitten him and knew there was bad news.

'They're dead,' said the Georgian, shivering and not with the cold. Evgeniy looked from the miner to the phone and back again.

'What can have happened! That makes fifteen people inside there. None of them were novices, certainly not Konstantin, and they wouldn't all be in the same place at once. It can't have been a rockfall.'

Karel came in, concern on his bland, round face.

'Hadn't we better get another team together? And notify the sanitarium. In fact I'd better get there myself, if we may get fifteen injured miners in.'

Evgeniy stopped to think for a moment.

'I need to see the MVD captain in town; I'll come with you. Avtandil, you are in charge until I return. Until I do come back, nobody – absolutely _nobody_ – is to go into that mine.'

There were four MVD soldier and a sergeant in the on-site dormitory, but Evgeniy wanted more men, more equipment and more time to think.

MVD Communications Room

MVD HQ

Lastochka Prospect

Trevilho

USSR

March 22 1969

'So, why, exactly, do you want a platoon up by the entrance?' asked the MVD captain yet again. Evgeniy made a sound that mixed grating of teeth, sigh and snort in equal amounts.

'Because of what happened in the mine! Look, the inspection team didn't report back, but the rescue team did, right up until the newly-blasted gallery. Therefore access isn't a problem, that isn't what caused everybody to stop talking to us. Besides that, it's practical policy to move one rescue team section two hundred metres ahead of the other. That way a roof-fall or rockslide doesn't get both of them at once. Konstantin – who went through Stalingrad, I may remind you, and doesn't scare easily – would keep one team well back from the rock face. And – and he said there was movement in the cavern the blasting created. Movement.'

The officer looked blandly unconcerned.

'Yes, movement. And?'

'Oh, use your brains! If people were able to move, then the inspection team would have walked out of there, and so would the rescue team. As things stand, the Mine Rescue Team went in nearly three hours ago and neither have they returned nor called us to explain.'

The MVD captain, one Kopensky by name, looked unconvinced. Evgeniy silently cursed the retirement last year of Captain Osipovitch, a man who knew exactly how the system functioned or not and adjusted his behaviour accordingly. This new guy seemed far too suspicious, slow and by-the-book. It was important not to upset him, since he commanded the largest body of troops in the area, all fifty of them, bar the five up at the mine. Important, yes, and difficult.

'You want us to bring rifles but won't say what for?'

'Not "won't", "can't". I don't know what happened in there but I can tell you it wasn't normal.'

Kopensky cocked his head to one side.

'What about sabotage? This mine produces the largest volume of the highest-grade nickel ore in the Soviet Union, which is why you have five men permanently on guard duty.'

Sabotage? mused Evgeniy to himself, if only for a second.

'No. That won't work as an argument. The nearest hostile force would be over the border in Finland, eighty kilometres away. Surely you can't imagine a force of Finns managed to walk that distance across the oblast, without being challenged or spotted, then got into the mine unseen and survived the blasting.'

'Perhaps they tunnelled,' suggested Kopensky.

Evgeniy slapped his forehead.

'No! the nearest point they might be able to tunnel from is in Finland, over a hundred kilometres away. They'd have millions of tonnes of spoil to get rid of, and we'd pick up their mining on the geophones.'

The phone on the captain's desk rang. He answered it and frowned in surprise, handing the set over to Evgeniy.

'For you. Be quick.'

'Hello? Evgeniy? This is Karel here. I have the sanitarium ready to accept any injured miners, and an ambulance waiting to head back up to the mine. Just give us the word.'

Evgeniy passed the news on to Captain Kopensky. The officer insisted on a full and detailed account of the night's happenings so far, which he noted down in an official file. By then the engineer felt his temper beginning to slip.

'I shall transmit this to Moscow, to the Interior Ministry headquarters. They may be better able to advise us.'

'Aren't you going to do anything?' asked an exasperated Evgeniy.

'Not yet,' admitted Kopensky. 'This is only one mine. They may have heard of similar events at other mines, with reasons and explanations.'

He raised his pen to make a point, just as the door to his office swung open when knocked upon. In came a soldier from the mine's MVD detachment, sporting a splendid black eye, ushering in Avtandil, who sported handcuffs and a look of mixed disgust and embarassment.

'What are you doing here!' asked Evgeniy and Kopensky simultaneously. The soldier jerked a thumb at Avtandil.

'He tried to prevent the sergeant from carrying out his duty, sir. Pulled a knife on him, and thumped me when I got it off him. The sergeant put him under arrest and sent the two of us down here in the GAZ. I think my nose is broken, sir.'

The officer seemed stunned into silence by this turn of events.

'Sorry, batano. I tried to stop them going into the mine, but Fatty wouldn't listen. He wants a medal, or promotion,' explained Avtandil. Evgeniy rolled his eyes in exasperation. Trust the hot-tempered Georgian to annoy the soldiers! And double-damn the sergeant for not taking any notice.

'When did Sergeant Grigorenko go into the mine?' asked Kopensky, using Fatty's real name and rank. Nearly forty minutes ago, came the answer.

'No reply from them, either,' muttered Evgeniy. 'Give them another twenty minutes just to be certain they're in trouble.'

Kopensky made certain to get the details about Avtandil's encounter with the sergeant, scribbling carefully in pen, finally making sure the miner was securely cuffed. By which time a fretting Evgenity pointed out that the MVD soldiers had entered the mine an hour ago, still without calling back.

For perhaps the first time, the officer seemed a little uncertain.

'Yes. Yes, true enough.' He flipped through a notebook, found the number for the MVD hutment at the mine and rang. There was no reply.

'Let me ring the Accomodation Block,' asked Evgeniy. 'There's always a man on the phone there.'

No there wasn't. The phone rang and rang, for at least thirty seconds, to no avail. Evgeniy frowned, thinking dark thoughts, scowling at the MVD officer as if he was to blame. Then he tried the extension at the mechanic's workshop, again to no answer. Nor was there a reply from the vehicle garage. Finally, he rang the power plant. Still no answer.

'This looks bad, chief,' commented Avtandil. His boss nodded, wondering what could have happened at the mine to close down communication so completely.

'Well?' asked Kopensky, looking interested. 'Nobody answering? It is –' and he checked his watch ' – nearly six in the morning.'

'Regardless, there are always men on duty in the power plant and the vehicle sheds. And if you ring for thirty seconds in the accomodation block at this time of the morning, someone will answer, if only to curse you for waking them up!'

Kopensky continued to play devil's advocate.

'Perhaps the lines are down.'

'The phone was ringing!'

A real edge of annoyance and anger crept into Evgeniy's voice. The two men locked stares until the engineer looked away, more worried than he could express verbally. Only a disaster could prevent everyone at NEC One from replying.

The phone rang, making him jump. Kopensky took the call, only for the I-told-you-so look on his face to vanish quickly. He passed the handset to Evgeniy.

'Doctor Pavel again. Be quick, someone else might try to use this line.'

Evgeniy took the black plastic handset with a twinge of unease.

'Hello? Evgeniy? Listen, I need to be quick. We've just had two men, miners, come into the sanitarium, absolutely terrified out of their wits. They ran here from the mine, can you believe that?'

Calculating, Evgeniy worked backwards, figuring that the men must have started running not long after Sergeant Grigorenko made his way into the mine.

'Did they say what's happening up there? I've tried to ring but nobody will answer.'

The doctor took an audible breath.

'They aren't able to say much, Evgeniy. I've had to sedate one already for his own – hey! NURSE!'

A loud _clack_ came over the earpiece as the doctor dropped the handset at his end. Background noises sounded; indecipherable shouting, running footsteps, a door slamming. The noises petered out until there was silence and then more footsteps.

'Hello, are you still there, Evgeniy?' asked Pavel's voice again, sounding a lot grimmer.

'Yes, I am. Are you okay?'

'I am,' said the doctor. 'But one of those miners just commited suicide. Cut his throat with a scalpel.'

A stunned Evgeniy sat silently for several thunderous heartbeats.

'The other man did speak, before the drugs knocked him out,' continued the doctor, before halting again.

'Go on!' encouraged Evgeniy.

'He said something came out of the mine. Something terrible, something dreadful, that killed. And it's headed this way.'

**TWO**

UNIT UK HQ

Aylesbury

Buckinghamshire

1975

Lieutenant Walmsley stalked through the distempered brick corridors of UNIT HQ Aylesbury, his big boots rapping loudly on the tiled floors like a man with a mission, which in fact is what he was. His mission this morning was to track down Doctor John Smith, the peculiar boffin and official "Special Scientific Advisor" to UNIT, who tended to be hard to track down. Most especially when he didn't want to be found, which seemed to be the case today.

The lieutenant knocked loudly on the Signal Room door, looking in at a bored corporal dozily smoking a cigarette and flicking through the pages of a newspaper.

'Any sign of the Doctor?'

'No, sir.'

The officer sighed.

'No signals for him, I suppose?'

A shake of the head in the negative.

Off went the lieutenant again. He'd already circled the building's interior, and even left the entrance to see –

that the lemon-yellow vintage car the Doctor lavished care and attention upon wasn't in the car park. Doubtless it was off in the country lanes, moving at a ridiculous speed, scaring the cattle and passing motorists.

Walmsley went back into the HQ, calling into the Guard Room.

'Can you call me in my room when the Doctor gets back in?' he asked.

Private Ely, an old acquaintance of the officer, looked up in surprise.

'He's not left, sir.'

Walmsley frowned. Where could the man be hiding? Ah!

'The garage workshops. The only place I haven't looked yet.'

Ely nodded in agreement, secretly hoping that the officer would leave soon, so he could carry on with his paperback horror novel.

'He must be working on that souped-up old banger of his, sir.'

This proved to be the case. The Doctor had wheeled "Bessie" off into Workshop One, an area set into the rear wall of the huge garage where the battalion transport parked. Redolent with petrol, diesel, grease, smoke, rubber and Swarfega, it was the haunt of various vehicle mechanics and fitters. Walmsley, in the role of Battalion Transport Officer, had found it a useful refuge for doing paperwork undisturbed by phone calls, radio messages, chits to sign and other ranks determined to ask silly questions.

'Hello, Doctor?' he called. Bessie, the ancient yellow roadster, stood over the service pit. Of the Doctor there was no sign. Walmsley, his besetting sin that of curiosity, edged closer to the car, looking inside.

'Yes?' replied a voice at his feet, making him start, nearly dropping his clipboard.

The Doctor's head and shoulders appeared from beneath the car, and within seconds he had pulled himself upright out of the pit, wiping his dirty hands on a cloth, standing alongside the soldier and looking small in comparison.

'Ah, Lieutenant Walmsley. More paperwork for me to sign?' he asked resignedly, indicating the clipboard.

'This? Oh, no, Doctor. No. I wanted to see you for a quick word.'

The Doctor didn't respond with an acid barb. For a soldier, he considered Walmsley to be fairly intelligent, with a quick mind and a touch of wit, qualities enough to warrant a listen at the very least.

'Well, carry on. I've finished sorting out the anti-gravity circuits anyway. Quite how a vehicle as unstreamlined as this one will cope – sorry, do carry on, old chap.'

The lieutenant nodded warily. With the Doctor, you could never be sure if he was pulling your leg or not, and he talked such unintelligible gibberish at times –

'Yes. Quite. Ah – anyway, Doctor, I've decided to put in for a permanent transfer to UNIT.'

The Doctor looked slightly surprised.

'Why on earth would you want to do that!'

The lieutenant blushed.

'Er – don't laugh, will you – after going toe-to-toe with those plastic horrors the Autons, I realised that the Russian hordes aren't the real threat. UNIT has a vital job to do, and I intend to be part of it. Don't laugh!'

The Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully, any ideas of scornful laughter receding into the distance.

'Very well put, Lieutenant. One day, perhaps, enough people will think like you to stop humans from killing other humans.'

Walmsley carried on.

'Now, to get accepted onto UNIT's permanent strength isn't easy. The budget is always tight and the panel want to look at my Regular Army service history, my UNIT service log and I need a referee. No, no, not yourself!' he added when the Doctor's eyebrow rose in inimitable sardonic fashion. 'The Brig is willing to put in a good word for me. The crux of the matter is that they also want a five-thousand page monograph on a subject of relevance to UNIT.'

'Go on, go on,' encouraged the Doctor, slightly exasperated and hoping that the officer would get to the point.

'My choice is an area nobody else has covered before: the Soviet Union and it's role in the creation of UNIT.'

A grin spread across the Doctor's craggy features.

'My dear boy, you have chosen an abstruse area! I remember Alistair being absolutely livid when they kept prevaricating in the Security Council.'

The Lieutenant grew more animated.

'That's just it, Doctor! For a good fifteen months they stonewalled every attempt to create UNIT, then, literally overnight, they stop opposing UNIT and pretty nearly _demand_ that it be established.'

'Hmm. Yes, I can see that there is potential for intelligent speculation there,' agreed the Doctor, almost interested despite his feelings about politics and politicians.

Walmsley nodded ruefully.

'Maybe, apart from the total lack of information about why they changed tack so dramatically. The only hint that's ever been found is mention of "Trivelho" a few months back from a defector.'

The Doctor finally lost patience.

'Look, what is it you want, Lieutenant? Just get to the point. Time is more precious than you know.'

'Ah – I wondered if you had ever heard of this Trivelho place?'

With a seriousness that the lieutenant had rarely seen, the older man shook his head briskly. For long seconds his vision went far beyond the walls of the workshop, looking into the past, maybe, or the future. Finally, with a visible start, he recovered himself.

'"This Trivelho place"? No, Lieutenant. No, I have not.'

The hulking officer tutted disappointedly.

'I was hoping maybe you had, since you seem to get around to odd places here and there.'

Once again the Doctor's expression became grim.

'My dear boy, I do not intend to travel to the Soviet Union until – what year is this? – well, not until 1991.'

'Oh?' commented Walmsley, cocking his head to one side, wondering exactly what the significance of the date incurred.

'I was there in 1917 and again at Sta – that is to say, in 1942. Quite enough for me, I assure you. Now, do be a good fellow and let me get on with my work on Bessie, will you?'

Bewildered by such cavalier disregard for the truth, not to say raving insanity, the officer went on his way, shaking his head sadly.

One reason the Doctor didn't want to be found, and his isolation in the service pit, was the sudden departure of Jo Grant. To his surprise, he'd taken her disapperance badly. Only belatedly did he realise that he'd come to see her almost as a surrogate daughter, and the emptiness of his laboratory or the TARDIS without her made him flee to other, more secluded quarters. Only the well-informed or persistent came to dig him out from there, like that large officer asking questions about Russia. Peculiar questions, too; as if he knew anything about – what had that name been? Did it in fact stir a fragment in his memory?

The Doctor didn't encounter Lieutenant Walmsley for several weeks, finally coming across him in a corridor at Aylesbury. The young officer took up so much room he stood aside to let the Doctor pass.

'Have you finished your essay yet?' asked the Doctor, politely, remembering that encounter in the vehicle workshop.

'No! Not yet,' replied Walmsley with vigour. 'But we did get a censored debrief from the British Army of the Rhine, from a defecting Russian GRU man. A friend of mine, on the interrogation team, slipped in a question about Trivelho.'

There came a pause in the conversation as Walmsley stopped, feeling slightly foolish.

'Er – he went white as a sheet, muttered about "Dark Children" and refused to say anything for the rest of the day.'

'I see,' commented the Doctor, rubbing his chin. There it was again, that feeling of prior knowledge. He'd need to check his 750-year diary for any mention. Trivelho, Trivelho, what for art thou.

'Carry on!' he said brightly to the officer, going on his way and returning to the lab. One of his current concerns was trying to get hold of a decent molecular analyser, a rectifying one if possible.

'Except, of course, that it isn't possible,' he grumbled to himself. 'Not in this century, anyway.' The last one he'd managed to jury-rig himself, from parts of an electron microscope, several oscilliscopes and miscellaneous spare parts from the TARDIS. The device functioned erratically; when working it worked well; when feeling temperamental it misread, miscued and misfired. Eventually the contraption gave out altogether. Quarter-Master Sergeant Campbell failed to appreciate that his scientific equipment – the "spare" oscilloscopes – had perished for the greater good of science. It would be extremely hard to squeeze any more out of him.

There was always Lieutenant Munroe, mused the Doctor. That other officer, Big John (to distinguish him from several other officer "John's"), recommended Munroe "if you ever need anything". Perhaps the information wasn't meant quite that literally – still, you never knew.

One thing that came back to him, irritatingly, with the persistence of toothache, was that word "Trivelho". Thanks to the Time Lord's subtle interference with his memory, the Doctor remained unsure if he'd really forgotten about Trivelho or had never known about it in the first place.

'Yes, I've heard the name,' revealed Lethbridge-Stewart when the Doctor popped in to ask the question. 'Town in Russia, got flattened. No more than that. No idea what's involved. And what makes you ask about it, Doctor?'

The Doctor pursed his lips and shook his head in exaggerated denial.

'Oh, just curious, just curious.'

'You don't fool me, Doctor! Given that Trivelho is behind the Iron Curtain I strongly suggest you leave well alone. Now, if you've quite finished?'

Recognising a dismissal when he heard one, the Doctor left for his office, where he dug an atlas out of the tottering pile of books in his cupboards.

'"Trivelho", he read, quietly and to himself. "Estimated population 5,000. Located 20 miles north of the Arctic Circle, 60 miles from the Finnish border. Principal industry: nickel mining. Town established in Tsarist times to run and service the nearby nickel and tin mines. Deemed of strategic interest to the Soviet Union due to the quantity and quality of the nickel ore extracted; tin seams now either exhausted or uneconomic of extraction." A small mining town, then.'

Once again he felt the tug of a memory, the ghost of knowledge. How annoying! And what of the "Dark Children" Walmsley mentioned? Where did they fit in?

The atlas went back on the bookpile and the Doctor went off to find a rather better-filed atlas, one of the Special Intelligence Strategic Summaries, kept under lock and key in the Library. The sniffy military clerk in charge of the books insisted on a proper signing-out, to the Time Lord's annoyance; he hated petty bureaucracy in any form.

'I'll only need it for a few minutes. Five at the most,' he protested.

'Five minutes or five hours, sir, you still need to sign for it,' insisted the clerk, keeping hold of the key, well aware of the Doctor's reputation for taking and keeping books.

Grumbling, the Doctor signed in his flowing boilerplate, then swooped on the atlases in their case. He wanted the North European-Scandinavian volume, which included the northern regions of Russia.

'"Trivelho,"' he read aloud, to the muted horror of the watching (and listening) clerk. '"Population 4,570" Very precise, aren't we. "23 miles north of Arctic Circle", etcetera etcetera, just the same as before. Oh, here we are. "One company of MVD troops, numbering ninety in total, are permanently stationed in the town, where they serve as mine security and escorts for vehicles. KGB representation is at cell level in Mayor's office. Location of the so-called "Trivelho Plaque." ' Closing the volume, he noticed a small strip of paper with red inking glued into the frontispiece and looked at it only in passing. Then he recognised the word "Trivelho" and read more carefully.

"ADDENDUM: after going to print it was reported that the town of TRIVELHO ref. Page 45 Series N72 83.54 127.45 had been designated target zone for artillery practice range and destroyed."

Naturally that gave him cause for thought. The "Trivelho Plaque" had less mysterious qualities; it was a rectangle of pure zirconium, incised with indecipherable characters, found at the mine in 1897. To date nobody had translated the script, and the plaque itself vanished in the Soviet archives during the Purges.

Other people were interested in Trivelho too, most notably Lieutenant Walmsley, who sat himself down next to the Doctor in the canteen at lunch.

'Hello there, Doctor. Things must be looking up with the – the Rootans, is it? You look less gloomy that before.'

'I have been thinking about the town in Russia that you mentioned, Lieutenant. Trivelho. Apparently –'

'It no longer exists!' interrupted the eager young man. 'I know, I know, I went back over newspaper clippings in the microfiche section.'

'Used for artillery practice, I understand,' continued the Doctor, pondering the sheer vandalism of destroying people's homes. The officer wagged a finger at him.

'Not just any artillery, Doctor. The Russians used nuclear artillery shells. Nine of them. They also claim that the nearby mine was destroyed in an accidental fuel-tank explosion. "Accidental" my backside! The Swedes declared that a tenth nuclear explosion had taken place.'

This unexpected information made the Doctor blink in surprise.

'But – my dear fellow, the town is located near the Finnish border. Was located. The fallout –'

'Exactly!' interrupted an enthusiastic John Walmsley. 'A big cloud of fallout went headlong over the border into Finland, driven by the winds. The Finns were hugely unimpressed. In fact they started to make encouraging noises to NATO, and the Swedes were pretty livid, too.'

'Understandably so. Nevertheless, they didn't join NATO.'

'No, since the Russians put a lot of political pressure on them, alongside a big fat soft loan totalling billions of roubles in a blatant bribe. It's all there in the English translations of various Scandinavian papers and magazines.'

Interestingly enough the news failed to make front pages in the West – there was the aftermath of a large-scale Viet Cong offensive occupying media attention, not to mention the death of Dwight Eisenhower, the first rumblings of the My Lai massacre and, more forbiddingly, large-scale skirmishes between the Red Army and the Chinese People's Army along the Ussuri River.

'Using nuclear artillery to destroy a town is pretty odd in itself. Why throw a lot of small shells at it when you can simply drop a single bomb that does the same job, except quicker. Afterwards some of the experts speculated that the Russians were hinting to the Chinese that they were ready to use tactical nuclear weapons if things escalated in the East.'

The Doctor tipped his chair back, stroking his chin with one hand. Desperate measures, shelling your own town with atomic artillery, especially since it risked sending your quiet, neutral neighbour into the arms of a hostile alliance. Desperate indeed. What might be the cause?

'That's another thing,' continued Walmsey. 'Lack of any stories from Trevilho survivors. The whole thing took place last decade yet we're no better informed from defectors or emigres or spies. If you ask me, I think that town was still full of people when it got nuked.'

'That's outrageous!' replied the Doctor, genuinely horrified at such a possibility.

'That's the Soviet Union,' replied Walmsley, in a hard voice. 'They're quite willing to mow down strikers with machine guns, Doctor. This would merely have been an extension of policy.'

'Politicians. Disgraceful,' muttered the Doctor. Walmsley remained silent; he'd done a degree in Politics before joining the Army and knew quite as much about them as he ever wanted to.

Before he left, Walmsley pointed another coincidence out.

'The day after Trevilho got flattened by atomic artillery shells, the Soviet Union stopped stonewalling in the Security Council and put it's weight behind the UNIT charter. The two are connected, if only I knew how.'

**THREE**

The next morning saw Walmsley ordering replacement parts for UNIT's fleet of aging Bedford lorries. This duty fell to him as the Battalion Transport Officer, and he got to be BTO by dint of having done the job efficiently on joining UNIT several years before. Necessary it might be; exciting it was not. The Doctor's arrival, therefore, came as a welcome break.

'Ah. Lieutenant Walmsley. Hard at work, I see,' announced the Doctor. Walmsley couldn't tell if this was sarcasm or not.

'Most people bother to knock, you know,' he grumbled, putting his pen down. The Doctor perched himself on the edge of the lieutenant's desk.

'Maybe so. I am not "most people", you have to admit.'

Walmsley nodded emphatically. No, the Doctor certainly wasn't. Technically you couldn't even call him a "person" in the strictest sense of the word.

'And interrupting an order form for carburettors and gearboxes is hardly compromising National Security, is it?'

The officer moved his hands over the order sheets.

'That's top secret information. Fate of nations rests in the balance. Officer responsible goes mad due to stress. Or boredom, whichever comes first.'

The Time Lord tutted.

'You made me so curious about that town in Russia that I intend to go and have a look for myself. You might care to come along.'

Used to strange behaviour and requests from the Doctor, this bizarre statement nevertheless rendered Walmsley speechless for a moment.

'Just like that! I don't think so, Doctor. The Russians are highly reluctant to let any Britons in, full stop, let alone a British soldier. A British soldier working for UNIT,' he added. 'And you need things like passports and visas to get behind the Iron Curtain. Plus internal travel documents for leaving towns once you get there. And some parts of the Soviet Union are completely off-limits to foreigners.'

'Nevertheless, I intend to go,' stated the Doctor, quite calmly.

Lieutenant Walmsley still had more to say.

'Look, Doctor, Trevilho will be utterly off-limits to foreigners. Not only that, if you managed to get there – by some miracle – then it would be an extremely unhealthy place to hang around, given all that radiation and contamination.'

The Doctor merely responded with a toothy grin, manifesting an air of being privy to a secret that Walmsley didn't know of.

'Of course!' he replied, standing and heading for the door. 'That's why I'm going back before the town gets destroyed.'

He reached the door and was opening it before Walmsley spoke again, in a puzzled voice.

' "Before"? how can you get there _before_ it's destroyed? It got levelled five years ago. Hang on, when are you intending to travel?'

'Right away,' said the Doctor over his shoulder, walking away, whistling a refrain from "Rigoletto" in carefree fashion.

'Potty. He'll need locking away soon,' muttered the officer to himself. A sudden realisation hit him: how was the Doctor going to get to the Soviet Union? In UNIT transport, doubtless, as his antique yellow motor didn't have the range or stamina to travel across Europe.

Oh no! realised Walmsley. He's gone off to "borrow" a Landrover without signing it out, if I know him, and taking twenty gallons of diesel to boot.

He left the room in a hurry, heading for the Doctor's lab, hoping to catch the boffin before he departed for foreign climes.

'A wandering minstrel I, a thing of – oh, hello, Lieutenant. Changed your mind?' said the Doctor, breaking off in mid-song.

Lieutenant Walmsley wagged a stern clipboard at him.

'Don't try the soft soap with me! Exactly how are you planning to travel to the Soviet Union? Tell me that!'

With an operatic gesture, the scientist pointed to the police box set in a corner of the lab.

'In the TARDIS.'

The officer's eyes darted to the blue police box, then back to the Doctor.

'In a police box. Do you wear a pair of red shoes with heels as well?'

The Doctor sighed. He ought to be used to human incredulity and ignorance by now, but really –

'No, Lieutenant, it only looks like a police box. A superficial resemblance, just as I only look similar to a human being.'

The young officer's curiosity was piqued by the comparison.

'Okay,' he pronounced, doubtfully. 'I shouldn't rush to judgement so quickly. Let's see inside it.'

The Time Lord unlocked the TARDIS doors, leading Walmsley inside. Walmsley promptly leapt outside again, checking that he had in fact walked into a police box that ought to be six feet square but which instead had the dimensions of the canteen. He walked back inside, slowly, staring alternately at the Doctor and the TARDIS' console.

'I expected a transporter. Like the ones on television.'

His companion wryly rubbed his chin.

'You mean Trans-mat. No, that particular human technology isn't due until the twenty-third century. This is the TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.'

For the second time in a few minutes Lieutenant Walmsley felt his brain suffer an information overload.

' "Time"? Is that why you mentioned getting to Trivelho _before_ it was destroyed? This thing is a time-travel machine?'

'And a spaceship. Don't forget the "Space" part of TARDIS.'

Seeing a chair, Walmsley sat down.

'Fine. So we're going to have a little jaunt to Trivelho in your spaceship. And go back in time. The Brig will never believe this. Hell, _I_ hardly believe this.'

Tweaking controls, the Doctor looked at his guest with mingled amusement and sympathy.

'Tell me, what date did the town of Trivelho get destroyed?'

'March twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty nine. Oh six hundred hours.'

Fiddling with dials and settings, the Doctor inititated the time rotor, which rose and fell whilst the characteristic wheezy dematerialisation of the TARDIS echoed around the control room.

'There we go,' he announced, in a satisfied voice. 'Ten days before March the twenty-seventh. We'll have time enough to do a little investigation and see if what you suspect is right or not.'

The officer, still seated, looked at the roundel-decorated control room, taking in the instrument panels, the monitor screens, a hatstand and several unidentifiable pieces of equipment. Suddenly, he started.

'Hey! You mean to say we're really going to end up in Trivelho!'

'Certainly. That was the whole idea of leaving UNIT Headquarters.'

'The damn Russian air defences are going to have a field-day with this thing – they'll shoot it out of the sky, but not before creating merry hell at an intruder over –'

He stopped at the Doctor's slow shake of the head.

'No, no, no. Don't think so literally – our transit is over time and space in five dimensions, totally ethereal in respect to outside observers in the normal four-dimensional continuum. We shall arrive entirely unexpectedly in Trivelho. And may I call you something else besides "Lieutenant"?'

'Uh – John. What's that!' he exclaimed as the TARDIS made a croupy, slightly bumpy landing. 'Are we taking off?'

'My dear chap,' sighed the Doctor. 'We've arrived.'

In order to find out exactly where the point of arrival was, he turned on the exterior scanner, seeing a dim, blank brick wall stretching out in front, upwards and to either side. Twisting the controls brought the interior of a dark, deserted brick building into view, the prospect broken only by lines of metal pillars marching off into the darkness.

'Excellent,' muttered the Time Lord. 'A nice secluded spot.' Behind him, looking over one shoulder, John goggled at the screen.

'Night-time! It doesn't get dark for another four or five hours. What happened to your lab!'

The Doctor pursed his lips.

'At a guess I would say we are in an empty warehouse. A good place to have landed; nobody around to see us materialise, nobody likely to discover us. Excellent!' and he slapped John on the back. 'Now, let's see about getting you some slightly less – er, inconspicuous clothes, shall we?'

Clothing that fitted John was in short supply in the wardrobes. With a little creativity, however, they managed. From being a spick-and-span military officer, Lieutenant John Walmsley became plain civlian John Walmsley, clad in down-at-heel second-hand clothes. Nor was he allowed to keep his pistol.

'I look like a tramp,' he complained, to unsympathetic laughter from his companion.

'Nonsense!' chortled the Time Lord. 'You look very presentable, for a provincial Russian worker.' With a slight pang of sartorial regret, he traded in his own impeccably tailored suit for an anonymous combination of trousers, old shirt and slightly battered jacket. 'Now, let's see what lies out there.' At his touch the TARDIS doors swung open.

John followed after, feeling the chill air in the warehouse. It was dank, and gloomy, and smelt of indefinable foreign things. Truly, this wasn't the UNIT labs back at Aylesbury.

'The way out,' murmured the Doctor, pointing to great double doors set in the near wall. 'The plan is to get out, circulate, see if the local population is still in place and take steps accordingly.'

'Hang on!' said John, with genuine alarm. 'Doctor, you may be fluent in Russian for all I know – after today I shan't doubt your word ever again – but I only speak half-a-dozen words, and those with a definite Lancashire accent.' Without slowing down, the Doctor replied over his shoulder.

'Don't you worry about language, John. I have a gift for languages. I think you'll find you have, too.'

'You'd better have, matey,' muttered John, bringing up the rear.


	2. Chapter 2

**THREE**

They emerged from the warehouse into biting, chilled night-time air, breath forming into barely visible clouds. Snow lay on the ground, trampled and rutted, coloured with mud from the road. Both the time-travellers walked in the vehicle ruts, since there was no pavement, and no street lighting either.

'The heart of darkest Russia,' joked John, trying not to slip in the slush and mud. There was no reply to his quip; the Doctor had his head up, sniffing the air like a bloodhound.

'Smoke,' he intoned. 'Woodsmoke. Not a bonfire.'

'Perhaps they like barbequeues in Trevilho,' commented John, sniffing the air but failing to detect anything.

'Not in a town of mostly wooden buildings,' said the Doctor. 'Only the really important ones here are made out of stone or brick. Everything else is made of wood, since there is a readily abundant supply in the forests.'

Having spoken, he looked around and took stock. Currently, they were in a street hardly worthy of the name, rather it was the gap between two large brick buildings that seemed to be storehouses. A brick wall that joined the end walls of each building also blocked off one end of the street.

'Come on, Doctor, let's get moving, I'm freezing here,' complained John. The only reply was a wagging finger and a "ssh!".

'Did you hear that?' asked the Doctor. 'Gunfire, I'm sure of it. We need to tread rather carefully from now on.'

Professional interest spurred John into listening, and he also thought he heard the faint crackle of automatic gunfire, distantly.

The pair walked slowly and cautiously to the end of the alley, listening carefully, the only sound the grate of shoes on mud and snow. John peered around the left-hand corner, the Doctor the right-hand.

With a start of recognition, John realised the long, dark object perambulating away from him on the other side of the street was not, despite it's appearance, a multi-headed monster but a queue of people, moving away and around another corner, led by someone in white clothing.

'Doctor!' he called in a low voice. In a second he was joined by the Time Lord, who just missed the end of the queue vanishing from sight. 'Damn! You just missed it – a load of people going off across the street. Must be evacuees.'

'Hmm. Perhaps,' came the unconvinced reply.

The Doctor felt acutely uncomfortable. Things in Trevilho seemed out of kilter already. Smoke, gunfire, and a mysterious column of people out walking in the middle of the night. The streetlights on this road were out. Another sign of untoward events?

'Let's try for the centre of town,' he said, leading the way across the street, John following after him, looking uneasily to either side, picking up his companion's lack of ease, and feeling a lack of weapons.

Only seconds after they disappeared around the same corner the queue had passed, a group of shadowy figures moved down the centre of the street. Coming across the tracks that John and the Doctor had left, the furtive collection tracked them back to the warehouse. Stopping briefly to check whether the building was empty, they sneaked inside …

'Keep it still! Keep it still!' shouted Zelenski, pulling on the rope that held their captive's left wrist tied to the table. The rope caught tightly around the creature's wrist, having been wound once around the mahogany table leg for leverage. Zhadov, sweat visible on his pate and bald brow, pulled equally as hard on the rope binding the creature's right hand. Petrosian, much lighter in build than the two men hauling on the arm-ropes, found himself struggling to control the thing's legs, which were bound together at the ankles. He hastily threw a loop over the ankles, tightened it and leaned backwards with all his sixty kilograms, reducing the hideous white monster's thrashing to a pronounced rapping of heels on the tabletop. He threw a clove hitch under the table, around the wooden leg, allowing a slight relaxation.

'Nicely done,' gasped Zelenski. The creature lay in a crucified position on the sturdy table, unable to do more than thrash it's head from side to side, and drum it's heels on the table-top. Blood from gaping wounds that used to be eyes leaked across the creature's face, and onto the varnished veneer beneath it.

'Comrade Bondarski will not be easy to placate about the table,' said Zhadov, half-joking. They had hidden the monster away in an annexe of the town hall, and Mayor Bondarski might not be happy about that.

'Then I will indent for abrasive cleaning fluid,' replied Zelenski, staring at the monster. 'But until I mention it, neither of you are to discuss this capture with anyone. Not with anyone at all. Is that clear? Good.' He rubbed at one temple, feeling tired. Feeling bewildered, if the truth be known, looking at this thing that had emerged from the mine. Fish-belly white, impossibly wiry and thin, bald and with an impressive arsenal of incisors.

'Looks like a goddamned vampire,' whispered Zelinski to himself. The mutilated horror on the table stopped writhing in undetermined agony and looked – wrong word but apt – _looked_ at him.

'Tell me exactly how we caught this specimen,' asked Zelinski, beginning to feel twitchy, scritchy nerves under his skin, alongside the need to understand the background here.

Petrosian shrugged his shoulders in a wonderfully liquid gesture.

'Zhadov and I got it from Patrol C4 . They were the ones who poked it's eyes out with bayonets, and they found the thing after blowing up a house with dynamite. It was too injured to escape or harm them, not so badly hurt that it couldn't be tracked.'

Indeed the horrid squalling thing lay quiet for the first time in hours. Zelinski didn't feel comforted or correct about how it had arrived here.

'Prepare to send a radio message to – ow!' for the creature had bitten him on the left wrist, transforming from resigned alien to rabid weasel in less than a second, flicking its head to the left with eager clashing incisors. Zelinski hopped across the room in a mixture of rage and pain, waltzing back to hit the creature across the brow with his Tokarev, hard enough to hear bones crack. More dreadful than being attacked was the loss of face he felt in front of Zhadov and Petrosian.

Once again, John whirled round, expecting to see a Hideous Something creeping up behind him.

Nothing.

'This is worse than Maiden's Point,' he complained. 'And this time I don't have a gun. Not a one.'

They had made fair progress once the Doctor decided to head northwards, despite icy snow, uncleared pavements and ankle-deep mud. So far they hadn't met anybody on the streets, the streetlights were still out and only occasional windows in the wooden tenements were lit, lit by candles to judge by the flickering glow. Their footsteps on the wooden pavements reminded John of Westerns he'd seen in his youth.

'If you don't carry a weapon then people will avoid pointing one at you,' said the Doctor, turning back to speak at John in a slightly pompous tone, so quickly it was obviously a rehearsed speech.

'You might tell them that,' said John, quietly, pointing at four men with guns who suddenly emerged from a wooden alleyway just in front of them.

Simultaneously, and as if on cue, a sharp sudden blast came from the town to the south, followed by a slow rumble.

'That came from where we left – ' began the Doctor, looking a little worried.

'Shut it,' snapped one of the gunmen, a little weasel of a man, cradling a rifle.

'Who the hell are you? And what are you doing waltzing around in the dead of night – without any guns, either?' asked another, fully as big as John, emphasising his questions with the muzzle of a shotgun.

So many strange things had already happened to John that his sudden and total comprehension of idiomatic Russian lacked complete surprise. For several seconds, however, his tongue refused to function, and it was lucky for him that the Doctor began speaking straight away.

'My dear chap, there's no need to threaten me. We're here to find out exactly what's going on.'

This remark provoked raised eyebrows.

'Oh yeah?' sneered a third man, this one carrying an aged-looking submachine gun. 'And how'd you get in past the cordon? Flew in, did you?'

'Something like that. We have our own transport,' remarked the Doctor, ruefully.

'Your own – you're not KGB, are you?' asked the big man, suddenly looking alarmed. John saw an opening.

'What do you think we are? Spies who hiked eighty kilometres from the Finnish border! Get real!'

'Neither are one of _Them_,' said the fourth man, who had been silent so far. 'Semyon, we ought to take them to the Mayor.'

'An excellent idea and one we were putting into practice ourselves,' said the Doctor with vigour. 'Let's get moving.'

The small man led the way, whilst the one carrying the submachine gun walked to one side, looking at John with naked hostility.

Who or what are "Them", he wondered, which is exactly what the Time Lord thought. The Doctor felt an unpleasant recollection at the back of his mind, too vague to recall, which slipped away when he tried hard to bring it back out of long-gone memory.

Their captors led the way across unmetalled roads, paths covered with melting snow and ice, past long wooden tenements. Only when they passed a small factory, with railings painted bright green, had there been an effort to get rid of snow and slush. The brick-built pavement lay swept clear of snow for a good fifty yards on either side of the factory gates, which were chained shut. Outside the gates stood a glass-fronted factory noticeboard, with a copy of "Izvestia" pinned up inside. John took this in at a glance when they walked past, noticing with renewed puzzlement that he could read and make perfect sense of the Cyrillic script. Another thing he noticed made him falter in his stride, only to be prodded on by the man carrying the submachine gun.

'Nice antique you've got there,' he commented in a sarcastic tone of voice.

'It'll still do a good job of cutting you in two,' said the man, venom in his voice.

'Shut up, Misha. You too, mister,' said the big man, Semyon, in a tired tone. Misha promptly shut up. John decided to remain silent, too. The Doctor, walking quickly, darted a glance back at John and pointed to the east. At first John dismissed the rosy glow as dawn, before realising it was far too early for that, and then remembered the Doctor's remark about smoke. Burning buildings?

Abruptly they turned a corner and into light, bright electric light in stark and brilliant contrast to the gloomy paths and byways they had already walked. Ahead of them lay the town square, swept mostly free of snow, paved and cobbled, with a bronze statue of Lenin on a plinth in the middle. Trees and lamp-posts, flourescents shining bravely, stood sentry-like around the perimeter of the square. Directly opposite the group stood an imposing neo-classical building, with wide stone steps and heroic statuary to either side.

'Ah, the Mayor's offices,' deduced the Doctor. Strange how the worker's representatives always managed to find themselves superior accomodation! He also noticed how the building seemed to be in a state of siege; sentries armed with automatic rifles stood at the entrance, the windows were sandbagged or battened shut and the group got long, hard, doubtful looks when they entered.

The interior of the entrance hall sported a black-and-white tiled floor, Doric columns, marble inlays and gold leaf on the ceiling. This elegance and opulence was spoiled by mud trampled all over the floor, the sandbagged entrance, the trestle tables supporting machine guns and nervous armed soldiers and civilians bustling everywhere.

A soldier in dark blue strutted over to the group with their prisoners. John recognised him as a member of the MVD military, the Ministry of Interior force that actually constituted a small army in it's own right. The Doctor recognised him as a typical petty-minded little dictator, eager to exert his bullying self when and where he could.

'Who have you brought us this time?' sneered the policeman. John took an instant dislike to him, and felt a common sympathy with the patrol, who immediately bristled with hostility.

'Two strangers, out wandering the streets, Captain,' replied Semyon Ivanov, in a flat and toneless voice. 'Said they're here to find out what's going on, and wanted to see the mayor.'

'Oh really?' said the officer, looking both prisoners up and down.

'This one talks like he comes straight from Moscow,' commented the weasly man, indicating the Doctor with his thumb. He pointed at John. 'And he ain't from round here.' The officer didn't seem impressed.

'You may go now,' he said to the air, not bothering to look at the group of armed civlians.

'Is there any news of the missing?' asked Misha, the man cradling the submachine gun, sounding only slightly less aggressive than when threatening John.

The officer turned an astonished look upon the man.

'That information is restricted. Don't even ask about it!'

Misha audibly ground his teeth together, and the muzzle of his gun wavered approximately in the direction of the MVD captain's chest.

'My wife and daughter are gone,' he hissed, concluding with an unflattering description of the captain, his parents and his habits. The Doctor turned slightly to look at the big man, Semyon, indicating that he ought to intervene with a nod of the head. Semyon took the hint, moved forward and gently pushed the gun muzzle away from the officer.

'Come on, Misha. Let's go get some kip.' He shepherded all three men away.

'You were going to take us to the mayor?' prompted the Doctor, allowing the captain to recover himself and save face by leading them away down the hallway.

'Yes. The mayor. Follow me.' A second MVD soldier joined them as an escort, following on behind. The bullying officer's façade rang a little hollow now. The Doctor felt he had the measure of the captain, and allowed his attention to focus on the town hall as they passed through it. Through an open door he witnessed a nurse binding up the left arm of an injured soldier, and behind her a harrassed-looking doctor talking urgently into a phone. The next door, only just ajar, revealed a switchboard of the plug-and-hole variety, with a drawn woman wearing headphones in attendance. An armed sentry, looking impassive, stood firmly in front of another door.

They were led upstairs, along a balcony and to an anteroom, where a mixed group of soldiers and civlians stood or sat, smoking, drinking tea from glass cups and talking in urgent tones. John coughed at the strong smell of tobacco, the smoke visible in layers across the room, indicating either a lot of cigarettes or no open windows. Other, earthy smells came to his nose; cabbage and black bread.

'Wait here. And you'd better have your ID ready,' snapped the MVD captain, walking over to a glass door with "Mayor" painted on it. The Doctor ignored the threat and instead cast a calculating eye across the assembly, most of whom ignored him. One or two people met his glance, before returning to their drinks or smoking.

'Doctor!' hissed John, now able to talk without being overheard. 'That factory we passed – did you see the paper on display there?'

'Hmm? Oh, the mine equipment factory. No, I didn't.'

'The paper was dated the twentieth, which has to have been yesterdays date – we aren't ten days ahead of this place getting blown up, we're only five days away!'

For once he witnessed the Time Lord struck by a sense of shock and surprise.

'Oh no! The TARDIS – I haven't reset it for non-Gregorian time elapsed. How stupid could I have been!'

He tried to explain to John quickly and simply the effect of transferring from one calendar convention to another – the net effect being a slippage in dates.

'Nor am I happy about the explosion we heard when that patrol captured us. I think it came from where we left the TARDIS.'

John felt his heart sink into his boots. Not only were they dangerously close to the destruction deadline, their transport out of this place might well have been destroyed too!

'Ah, here comes our little dictator, back again. From now on, let me do the talking.'

The MVD captain walked amongst the onlookers with an air of importance, as if he and only he knew what was worth knowing.

'You two –' and he pointed at the travellers – 'come with me.' Their escort shuffled along behind, until the captain shook his head.

The mayor's office, beyond the anteroom, was an immense room panelled in mahogany, with a picture and a bust of Lenin. A green carpet, slightly threadbare, covered the floor up to six inches short of the walls. The mayor himself stood in front of his big oak desk, chatting quietly to a small group of men, four in all, who looked tired, drawn and unshaven.

Led by the MVD officer, the Doctor and John clumped across the carpet to the desk.

'Prisoners as requested, sir,' saluted the officer.

'Yes, thank you, captain,' replied the mayor, a short, stocky man in his fifties, thinning on top and with lots of five o'clock shadow. 'You can wait outside. I'll call if we need you.'

Disappointed, the captain stalked away. The mayor was careful not to begin talking until the door closed behind the officer.

'You've been caught out after curfew, and the captain thinks you're spies. What do you have to say for yourself?'

'And where are your internal passports?' asked a tall, wiry man in glasses, his thin, intelligent face wearing a perpetually wary look.

'Don't have them,' admitted the Doctor cheerfully. 'Left them in our transport as I didn't expect to get arrested and marched here at gunpoint. Didn't Number Two contact you with our details?'

The tall man looked blank at this, but a third party, riffling a set of papers, looked up suddenly. He had fierce eyes and a severe crew-cut.

' "Number Two"?' repeated the mayor, not following what the Doctor meant.

'Number Two Dzerzhinsky Street,' explained the Time Lord politely and cheerfully. The mayor gulped in recognition.

'Oh. KGB Headquarters. I see. No. No message,' he replied.

'Who the hell are you!' asked the crew-cut paper-checker, putting the sheaf down and looking at the travellers with anger. John caught a glimpse of steel teeth, ana dirty bandage on the man's left wrist. 'I'm local cell chief here, and I didn't get any message about new arrivals. You're trying it on!'

Sighing mildly, as a patient parent might, the Doctor carried on with his tissue of lies.

'My dear chap, get in touch with Dzerzhinksy Street yourself, ask for Section Seven, Internal Inspectorate and the file on Doktor Ivan Kuznetz, and Lieutenant Ivan Izvestilnyuk.'

The steel-toothed man wagged a cautionary finger.

'We can't. You know we can't. The phone lines are down.'

Silently, the Doctor thanked being nosey earlier on – he knew the phone switchboard hadn't been working because none of the lights were on, but it had been a gamble.

Don't they have radios? wondered John, keeping his musings silent.

'Exactly,' continued the Doctor. ' Moscow can't make heads or tails of what is going on here, not from what you've reported so far. This is a strategic facility, you know. Metallurgical alloy combines in the Urals rely on the nickel mined here.'

The silent accusation of being a saboteur in all but name remained in the air, causing the KGB man to shrink inside his shabby suit. John wondered how on earth the Time Lord managed to take control of the situation so easily, when the odds were stacked against them.

'Now that we've established that, perhaps we can get down to facts?' said the Doctor, gently. 'I take it you are the crisis committee?'

The mayor nodded and introduced each of the team. The tall man in a beige suit was Evgeniy Klimentov, Chief Mining Engineer at the Nickel Extraction Combine; the man with steel teeth was Evgeny Zelenski, senior officer of the three-man KGB cell here in Trevilho; a fourth, swarthy man with a sweeping moustache, silent so far, was Avtandil Abuladze, a driller on loan from Baku; a big, shaven-headed man also from the KGB, and lastly the mayor himself, Stepan Bondarski.

The tall engineer began speaking.

'It began when we blasted a new gallery in the nickel mine. The inspection team – they get sent in from Leningrad for major jobs – didn't report or return after over ninety minutes. Neither did the Mine Rescue Team. From their report we knew the mine was passable - but still nobody returned. I came back to the MVD here in town to request a large force of armed men to go and examine the mine interior. That got delayed when the mine's security detachment ignored my orders and went into the gallery.'

Pausing to light a cigarette, the man continued.

'It – it seems that a kind of wild creature got released from an underground cavern, through a hole created by our blasting.'

'Not just one?' asked John.

'No. No, not just one. Dozens, according to the only eyewitness to survive.'

'What colour are they? How many eyes do they have?' asked the Doctor with excitement.

'Eh?' replied Evgeniy, stupidly. Lack of sleep, lack of food and perpetual terror were dulling his wits. 'Colour? How many – '

'They are white as snow,' stated the swarthy, hitherto-silent man. 'Naked, white, and with glowing red eyes. Of which they have only two, for your information.'

'Oh,' replied the Doctor, in a disappointed tone. 'Not Silurians, then. Pity. We could have negotiated with them.'

A long-dormant memory suddenly clicked, and he snapped his fingers.

'Aha! Got it! John, your contact's transcript wasn't very accurate, was it!'

A puzzled John shook his head in surprise.

'It wasn't "Dark Children", it was "Children of the Dark", or more correctly, "Children of the Night". Think about that. Children of the Night.'

John thought. The line came from a cheesy black and white horror film, for all that he could see.

'They aren't very child-like,' said Avtandil, drily. 'But you are right about daylight. Never seen in it.'

'They resemble giant leeches,' added the Mayor. 'They drink blood, human blood. And they can put a spell on you. They walk up to a person, stare in their eyes and that person goes off with them, never to be seen again.'

_Is there any news of the missing? _Misha, the small hostile man with a submachine gun, had asked. His wife and daughter, recalled the Doctor.

'You make it sound like –' began John, before stopping. The Time Lord looked queryingly at him. 'Like vampires.'

'Exactly. Just like vampires. Because this is not the first time such an event has happened.'

All eyes were instantly upon him after a statement like that. Relishing the attention, the Doctor perched himself on the desktop.

'I just remembered where I'd heard it before. In the Schwarzwald, in 1592, German miners unearthed a colony of these creatures, numbering in the dozens. They killed thousands before being destroyed. And, yes, their existence did give a popular basis to the myth and legend of the modern European vampire.'

The Russian officials looked at each other. If the tall, white-haired stranger had come to them nine days earlier, they'd have thrown him into the sanitarium's padded room. Today he had their fullest possible attention.

John looked more sceptical.

'You mean you can fend them off with garlic, crosses and holy water?' he scoffed, only realising after the words were out of his mouth that he was in an atheist state that frowned, to put it mildly, on religion.

'Absurd!' sneered the Mayor, mistakenly thinking that John had been mocking religious icons.

'Not so absurd. We kept some of them at bay with garlic on the first night.' murmured Avtandil. 'It doesn't seem to work any more,' he added, resignedly.

'How does this German event help us here, now, in the Soviet Union?' asked Zelenski. 'How do we stop them? How do we destroy them?'

The Doctor stood again, incidentally taking a pirogi from a plate on the Mayor's desk.

'I'm not so sure you can destroy them, certainly not all of them. You mentioned an ability to control people by direct mental influence,' he said, turning to the Mayor.

'I did? Oh – the spells.'

'Not spells – a powerful applied mental force. That kind of mental ability gives them an intrinsic binding force that renders them difficult to kill. Normal bullets won't have much effect until you literally shoot them to pieces.'

This sounded dismally like the Autons, thought John. Unless you used really _big_ bullets.

'We know that,' snapped Zelenski.

'We found that out the hard way, Doktor Kuznetz,' said Evgeniy. 'These things came out of the mine and started towards Trevilho, and would have been here if sunrise hadn't intervened. Kopensky – the captain who brought you in here – sent his men up to the mine with instructions to evacuate the shift-workers and liquidate anyone who wasn't a miner.'

'Let me guess,' broke in the Doctor. 'They didn't find any miners.'

Evgeniy nodded, feeling ashamed that he'd survived when his colleagues hadn't.

'Not a single one. Barring the Mine Rescue Team there ought to have been about seventy men on duty. There was blood on the floor in the accomodation block, scattered around, a few tables and chairs overturned.' He struck another match and lit another cigarette. 'Kopensky's not very forthcoming about what happened next. He sent out an alarm call from the radio in the local MVD's personnel carrier, and got another fifty men trucked in. His men say they cordoned the mine off entirely and didn't find any tracks leading into it from anywhere. Half of them went into the mine and tried to keep in touch over the phone system. Within minutes a gun-battle broke out and none of them came back.'

Zelenski got up and went over to the Doctor, facing him at very short range.

'Now what do we do! You tell us, Mister Moscow Metropolitan Man! Go on!' he spat.

The angry KGB officer seemed ready to inflict violence upon the taller man, balling his fists and setting his jaw aggressively. John balled his right fist, ready to step in with an uppercut; the Doctor wasn't a young man and it simply wouldn't do to allow a crop-headed thug –

Using the index and forefinger of his right hand, the Doctor pressed them firmly to Zelenski's chest, just above the sternum. Instantly, an expression of alarm and horror appeared across the man's face as he found himself utterly paralysed.

'I really do detest violence, you know,' said the Time Lord, casually finishing off his pastry. 'It solves nothing. You can regard this, Comrade Zelinski, as a pre-emptive move.' He removed his fingers, allowing the stunned victim to stagger over to a chair, looking alternately bewildered and angry.

'How have you kept them at bay?' continued the Doctor, ignoring the sulky Zelinski..

'Er – with fire. Fire. Burning buildings and blasting dynamite,' said the Mayor, stumbling over his words.

'The answer is: not very effectively,' added Evgeniy. 'They came into town on the first night and took hundreds with them. Hundreds. The MVD soldiers, the ones that were left, tried to shoot them and plenty got killed for their trouble. The Mayor declared an emergency and the town males were given arms.'

'We discovered, by suffering ambushes in the dark, that the creatures were hiding in the basements and cellars and sewers during daylight. Come darkness they sneak out again,' added the Mayor.

'We call them "creatures". Don't underestimate them, however,' spoke the second KGB man, Zhadov. 'First of all they brought down the town's telephone lines, in seven different places at once, so we couldn't fix them. Then they cut the power coming in by pylon cable.'

'Evacuate,' said John, knowing what would be coming in five days. 'Clear the town now.'

The Mayor shook his head.

'Impossible. Moscow has sent Red Army troops and MVD soldiers from across the whole Murmansk oblast to cordon off the town.'

Zelenski looked up at this recitation.

'No information about our lack of success is to be allowed to get out. The rest of the oblast, never mind the West and the Americans, cannot be allowed to know how utterly helpless we have been. Moscow thinks of these creatures as a living infection. None must be allowed to escape.'

'Even at the cost of this town's people?' asked the Doctor, in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried a great deal of weight. Zelinski merely frowned in reply.'We have five days before the Red Army moves in with tanks and flamethrowers,' explained Evgeniy. 'Everyone in the town will be forced to remain here until the creatures are dealt with. Then – I suspect medical testing and detention.'

You suspect quite the wrong thing, thought John to himself, unhappily.

The Georgian had walked aimlessly across the room, looking out of a window and returning to inspect both John and the Doctor at close range. John got a cursory glance; the Doctor drew a much sharper scrutiny.

'Well, Comrade Kuznetz, how do we deal with these creatures? Comrade Zelenski asked you, perhaps not the way I would, however the question still stands.'

'Use heavy machine guns,' interrupted John, recalling the names of Soviet weapons from familiarisation lectures. 'A few rounds from a Dushka will knock them apart.'

The Mayor shook his head.

'This isn't an armed camp, Comrade Izvestilnyuk. We don't possess such things. No, we can't go ask the cordon for a loan of weapons. A dozen people are dead already from approaching the roadblock. Shot without warning.'

'What weapons do you have?' enquired John, aware that the Doctor was deep in thought and not answering any questions at present.

A buzzer on the table summoned Captain Kopensky, who was asked by the Mayor to detail what arms the townspeople had.

'AK-47's, for the most part. One RPD light machine gun, with a single belt of ammunition left. Shotguns, hunting rifles, a couple of sub-machine gun souvenirs from the Great Patriotic War. Fused sticks of gelignite for the mine, Molotov cocktails. Ammunition is running low for all firearms, and we can't get any more.' The façade of an over-confident apparatchik dropped temporarily. 'The ammunition is unlikely to last out even tonight.' Kopensky straightened up again. 'We will, however, continue to perform our socialist duty to the end.'

A slow, mocking clap came from the Doctor.

'Bravo!' he said. 'Before that comes to pass, perhaps I could see the body of one of the creatures. You must have at least one available?'

Kopensky cleared his throat in embarassment.

'Really, you know, if I am to find the creatures weak spot, I shall need to study one,' continued the Doctor.

'I could go and sweep bits into a sack,' offered Avtandil, to the Doctor's look of dismay. John bit back a snigger. Apparently fighting with dynamite didn't leave much in the way of corpses to deal with.

'That makes things more difficult. John, I need to go back to our transport to obtain information. No, don't worry about the vampires attacking, it's dawn now. Look.'

The group looked out of the window, to see a watery sun peeking above the horizon. Whilst their attention lay outside, the Doctor took John aside.

'I have an idea about these creatures, John, which requires getting back into the TARDIS. Try to keep these people occupied until I return.'

**FOUR**

Not a difficult task. With the arrival of sunshine and safety, most of the makeshift garrison in the town hall disappeared into temporary dormitories for long-overdue rest. Within a minute the only people still moving around were John, Zelenski and an MVD private. The KGB's senior officer clearly didn't trust John any more than he trusted the Doctor.

'These vampires don't like fire, am I correct?' asked John, clattering down the stone stairs to the ground floor.

'Not a bit,' confirmed Zelinski. 'It kills them. So they keep far away from it.'

'Uhuh. I take it you have wire and detonators for your industrial explosives? Good.' He carried on walking, looking for –

'What are you after!' snapped Zelinski, short of both sleep and temper. 'You're prowling like a wolf after sheep. What do you want!'

'Paint. In tins. And vaseline.'

'Eh?' said the KGB officer, not following John's chain of thought.

'Tins of paint. Where do you keep them – oh, I know! That factory making mine equipment. Probably has petroloidum, too.'

Lessons learnt in classes about Improvised Explosives were coming back to John.

'Petroloidum? Look, I really don't know who you are, you with your fancy shoes and accent. One thing about you I do know, and that is you aren't getting into the factory.'

John turned slowly to look at Zelinski. The trio of John, KGB officer and escorting soldier were in the basement of the town hall, walking down a ill-lit corridor made of badly-laid wooden planks, Zelinski getting visibly more agitated as they walked on. The doors to either side opened only onto bare, unlit rooms. John pushed one open.

'Take a good look. If you continue to be obstructive I'll throw you in there. Now, paint tins. It doesn't matter if somebody else gets them, as long as they arrive here within the hour.'

Zelinski opened his mouth.

'Shut up!' shouted John, beginning to lose his temper. 'Get those paint tins and det cord and I'll show you how to improvise napalm, you buffoon!'

Three doors down from that door so carelessly thrown open by John, a frankly scared Petrosian looked at the white monster on the tabletop. Earlier that morning Zhadov had replaced the ropes with wire cable, thinner than rope and less likely to be snapped or frayed, and the ends were tightened with pliers. Just to be on the safe side, Petrosian had tied a rag around the thing's head, covering the empty eye-sockets. These precautions still didn't prevent the creature from practicing it's most frightening ability; telepathy.

Not that Petrosian didn't know about the concept. Science-fiction novels, a permissible vice in the Soviet Union, had introduced the idea to him as a teenager. Meeting a real telepath in the flesh – well, that was different, most especially when the creature looked so repellent.

_Let this one go!_ came the sinister drift of mental communication from the bound vampire.

'When my grandmother lies down with the devil,' commented Petrosian. The creature might be able to send messages to him mentally; one thing it couldn't do was control him. The missing eyes probably explained that.

Ritually, for the hundredth time, he tested the wire bonds. Still taut, still taut. Sitting himself down on the flimsy wooden stool by the radio table, he smoked another cigarette, checking the notes Zhadov had scribbled on the pad by the microphone. They were the results of an interrogation earlier in the small hours, mostly one-sided: who are you; where do you come from; what is your organisation; what political orientation are you, etcetera, etcetera. Typical stuff, with hissing, teeth-baring and spitting the atypical responses. He and Zhadov took care not to get bitten, wary after Zelinski's unpleasant lesson in the creature's hearing and neck length.

_Behind you!_

Petrosian whirled off the stool, drawing his pistol and aiming in one swift movement, moving just as the instructors taught him.

Nothing there, of course. The creature was trying to frighten him. Damn, where had Zelinski gotten to! There ought to be two of them watching this thing at all times, given that it was non-human, telepathic, hostile and the precursor of hundreds of others.

And another thing. Why didn't Zelinski tell the mayor, or Kopensky, or anyone, that they had a live vampire available in the cellar? "Orders from Moscow," Zelinski told them. Neither of the other two agents dared question that, just as they permitted their senior to code and transmit information about these things to headquarters on his own. Someone, somewhere, thought Petrosian cynically, would be trying to ingratiate themselves with the heirarchy by being able to produce a live vampire and a method of exploiting same.

The thin sunlight didn't provide any warmth, even if it did provide illumination. A small breeze that nevertheless possessed icy knives within itself sprang up once the Doctor moved across the square. He encountered groups of armed civilians on his way back to the TARDIS, interspersed with occasional MVD soldiers, all of whom looked at him curiously. None dared to stop him, protected as he was by the indefinable air of a man with serious official business to conduct.

Unerringly, he retraced his footsteps of the night before across the sleet and mud-covered roadways, slowing to rub his cheeks. With a sense of foreboding, he saw footsteps that didn't belong to himself or John entering the alleyway leading to the warehouse where the TARDIS was hidden.

'Oh no!' he gasped involuntarily.

Where the warehouse once stood, a giant pile of rubble now existed. No trace of fire damage, and considerable scattering of lighter debris – the result of an explosion.

'Oy. You. What're you up to, mate,' asked a hoarse voice behind the Doctor. He turned slowly, not wanting to provoke hasty responses. Three men, stubbled, pouchy-eyed and dirty, also carrying rifles, were looking at him with interest.

'I said –' repeated the scruffiest of the trio, a man looking like an operatic bandit.

'Yes, yes, I heard you. I came back here to get my – er, transport – yes, my transport - from the warehouse. And now I find –' and the Doctor waved an expressive arm at the pile of bricks and timber that lay in front of him.

'Yeah. We did that,' said the other man, proudly. 'The White Devils left an infernal device in there, they did. Big blue box. So we blew it up.'

His tone invited praise. The Doctor gave it, sarcasm informing every word.

'Sorry your wagon's gone, mate. Still, you've always got your legs, eh?' commented the bandit leader, to the amused sniggers of his companions. At this masterstroke of humour they departed.

'Humans!' said the Doctor sadly, shaking his head. 'Why do I bother.' The detailed information in the TARDIS files would remain there. Only a bulldozer could remove the tons of rubble lying on the TARDIS, and bulldozers were in short supply at the moment. Well, in that case, he needed to recall the information needed. Which meant a series of mental exercises to unearth memories dormant for a hundred and fifty years.

'Fire!' yelled John. Zelenski closed the contact and current coursed through the wire, detonating the blasting cap and gelignite stick portion. The explosion shattered the ten litre paint tin, hurling paint across the square; paint thickened by vaseline and ignited by the explosion, creating a cone of flame thirty metres wide and equally as long. The flames lay and licked on the town square for ten minutes afterwards.

'Get the idea?' asked John, rhetorically. Scattered spectators for half a mile around came to see what had taken place in the town square, including one mature lady who roundly condemned the hooligans scorching official town trees.

Zelinski became less obstructive once he understood and witnessed exactly what John intended to create with paint and explosives. After all, as the young officer explained, a barrier of fire would kill or deter the vampire creatures most effectively, without requiring any of the now-scarce ammunition. Zelinski barely stopped to hear this exposition, hurrying off back to the town hall at a fast walk.

Lazy swine! Off to get a kip, condemned John mentally.

'I'm going to write to the town soviet, you hooligan!' squawked the indignant matron in front of John. 'Vandal! Not even the Germans managed to damage our town square trees! Now look at them!'

'Madam,' sighed John, in exasperation. 'I hope you get the chance to. Really.'

The Doctor had toured the perimeter of the town square five times before anyone plucked up enough courage to ask what he was doing.

'Thinking,' he replied, occupied. Not a very comprehensive answer. Replying "Attempting to trigger a long-term memory cascade by virtue of time-relevant mnemonics" would have meant nothing to the person asking.

After seven tours, the person in front of him turned out to be John.

'Earth to Doctor. Are you with us?'

'Not quite. I regret to say that the TARDIS is now sitting under a hundred tons of building. The explosion we heard and worried over last night was indeed a demolition squad at work on our warehouse.'

John's eyebrows rose with alarm and dismay.

'Don't worry too much,' said the Doctor, a twinkle in his eye. 'It takes more than a few hundred tons of rubble to damage the TARDIS. Our problem will come in removing the ruins to get access. That, and having my notes stuck inside.'

'Oh, yes, that's a much more pressing problem than being stuck in the Soviet Union with no documents, and being a hostile foreign soldier to boot.'

'Sarcasm, John, does not become you. Let us convene a meeting in the town hall.'

Four men from their previous meeting, barring Zhadov, were present in the mayor's room, along with several other selected men and a female doctor. All were looking tired and drawn. They regarded the Doctor with wary suspicion, not allowing any degree of understanding to show.

'Firstly, let me say that these creatures who have been attacking your mine workings and town are not native. By that I mean they are not indigenous to this planet.'

Startled looks and whispers began in the listeners.

'The description you gave me did agree with that of a race of creatures known, somewhat facetiously, as the Cadaverites, and more formally as the Karausians. They were tall, thin, lacked any pigment in their skin and lived on blood. However, they were also pacifists with high moral and ethical values, who considered killing to be utterly depraved. Being an intelligent and civilised race, they cultivated artificial blood substitutes to live on. Nor did they ever wander around naked.'

The Doctor only seemed unaware of the stir he created in his audience. In reality he knew just what they were saying and probably thinking, too.

'This is preposterous!' scoffed a stranger, who looked well-fed and comfortable, and also annoyed. 'You are either insane or lying.'

'Tell me, Comrade – Comrade ?' riposted the Doctor.

'Comrade Bessmertanova. Young Communist League Director,' answered the man, haughtily, crossing his arms.

'Comrade Bessmertanova, do you think that those creatures from the mine are Finnish saboteurs? American-led paratroops here to cause mayhem? Large, blind, albino mice?'

'There's a rational explanation for this – this event,' blustered the man.

'There is,' said the Doctor. 'Mine,' he finished.

'Their clothing covered their bodies completely, due to their extreme vulnerability to ultra-violet radiation. In full daylight, here on Earth, they would die within seconds. This is one reason you have never been attacked in daylight, and why the creatures from the mine don't venture out into the sun – it would be fatal to them.'

The incredulous murmurs grew more interested.

'How do we kill them in the absence of sunlight?' asked a stranger sitting next to Zelenski.

'Wooden stakes,' muttered the KGB officer, sullenly, to a small ripple of amusement.

'Silver,' stated the Doctor, simply. Seeing that he had their attention, he continued in the same matter-of-fact tone. 'Silver bullets, or a silver knife blade or spearhead. Silver disrupts the neural pathways of the Cadaverites, so a silver bullet will kill them almost instantly. Gold will also work, after a delay of up to a minute.'

There were puzzled comments of _silver? Did he say silver?_ Amongst the listeners. John tried to recall what he knew about vampires, decided that the Hammer films of Christopher Lee didn't really amount to a reliable source and wondered about werewolves; did that outbreak in Renaissance Westphalia or wherever begin legends about silver bullets and lycanthropes?

'Unfortunately, we do not possess the silversmiths you are doubtless used to in Moscow,' said Zelinski. 'Nor is the Combine a gold mine.'

'Think, man!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'What building found in every town would contain large amounts of silver!'

Zelinski still didn't see it, even if several other people expressed realisation.

'The local church,' realised John, dredging up memories from his political science lectures. 'Silver plate, silver candlesticks, silver incense burners – lots of silver.'

Mayor Bondarski coughed in slight embarassment. The local Orthodox church, he explained, no longer possessed bourgeouise accoutrements like silver plate, which had been repossessed by the state to –

John put one bear-like arm around the Mayor, tightened it to a near-painful grip and led him off to one side.

'Put the word out to the faithful, Comrade Bondarski. Silver items to be deposited in a container on the town hall steps, no questions asked, before nightfall. No, no, don't argue, just run along and do it.'

Rubbing his bruised shoulder, the Mayor left with bad grace, looking back at John, who merely smiled blandly to the departing official and those who had bothered to watch him.

'I also noted that illumination in the square outside is by flourescent lights,' continued the Doctor, giving John an appreciative nod. 'Designed to copy daylight, hence emitting a certain amount of ultra-violet radiation. Any people taking shelter in the square would be defended from attack by our hostile friends. A contingency plan taking that into account would be wise.'

One of the listeners brightened visibly at hearing this; he was the town's principal civil engineer.

'Why, yes, that's right. What's more, the remaining power line into Trevilho runs underground so it can't be cut by those creatures, unlike the phone wires. I know we have plenty of spare flourescent lights in storage. That's good thinking!'

'Lastly, I have to ask what these creatures want,' finished the Doctor. 'What are they trying to do, and why? Do they merely kill for the sake of it? Are they abducting people to use as human livestock? How many of them are there?'

'Lots more each night,' stated Kopensky, causing the Time Lord to give him a sharp stare. John realised the Doctor had been startled by the officer's offhand remark, which didn't appear at all unusual.

'Lastly, it is essential that we get communications restored with the outside world. Moscow must be made aware of the facts, and permission gained to evacuate the town.'

Predictably, the KGB men present weren't happy at the prospect of evacuating Trevilho, which would be an admission that the situation had slid out of control. Surprisingly they didn't make much of the need to get the phone lines restored, a fact which both travellers would recall later. Kopenksy pointed out that many of his men were dead or missing, and that the situation had indeed slid out of control, like it or not.

'Don't you have a radio?' asked John. Surely the MVD would have at least a back-up for talking to Moscow in case the phone lines were brought down by snow or accident.

'Yes, we have a radio. It is waiting for replacement tubes from the stores at Kachenga. Our other radio was in the BTR, which is still up at the Combine. You may care to go up there to retrieve it.'

'Maybe later,' suggested the Doctor. 'In the company of Comrade Bessmertanova, who can determine exactly what our unpleasant visitors are at close range. Hey, Comrade? No? You're not coming. How disappointing. In the meantime, my colleague and I have been without sleep for two days, and in view of how much needs to be done tonight, we need to rest for at least a couple of hours.'

The stern-faced female doctor led them from the room, which started to buzz with conversation behind them instantly the door closed.

'Follow me,' she instructed them, in a tone that brooked no nonsense, leading them downstairs into a long room full of camp-beds, filled centrally by an immense, immaculately-polished table with crystal vases positioned every few feet along its length, set upon lace doilies. Various civilians and a couple of MVD soldiers lay on the camp beds, reading, smoking or sleeping. The smell of sweat, cigarettes and cabbage lay over everything, a smell John started to recognise as definably Russian.

'There,' said the doctor, pointing at two vacant beds, her voice jumping with indignation.

'No wishing us sweet dreams?' shot back John, sarcastic and daring, beginning to take his shoes off.

The woman darted him a look of mixed dislike and disdain, two spots of scarlet forming on her high cheeks.

'Monsters from outer space indeed! The sooner we get back in touch with your headquarters, the sooner we'll get the truth about you two. Zelinski might only think it but I'll say it: you're spies!' and with that she was off, stalking across the parquet floor, the effect spoilt by a drowsy man cursing her noisy footsteps.

'There's two things I deliberately didn't tell our audience, John,' said the Time Lord off-handedly. The young officer cocked his head expectantly; the Doctor had a habit of delivering the biggest news in an understated way. 'The Cadaverites are extinct. They were never a very numerous race and the last one died over a thousand years ago.'

'Then it looks like they had a reprieve. What was the second thing?'

'They died out through deliberate choice, John. A highly-developed ethical sense meant they could no longer carry on perpetuating their race at the expense of others.'

Sitting on the edge of the camp-bed, John shrugged.

'Sorry, I don't follow you. They got a case of conscience?'

The Doctor shook his head.

'Not quite. They always had conscience. No, they turned their back on replicative absortption. Several races I've encountered use it to reproduce, but the Cadaverites took a self-sacrificing step beyond it. A commitment to ethics, indeed.'

The sound of "replicative absorption" impressed John. When his companion explained exactly what the process involved from the victim's point of view, the officer felt his skin crawling over his muscles.

'So. Not bothered by bullets, unless they're silver. Inhumanly strong. No sense of mercy. And they can just walk up to us, give us the big stare and we meekly follow them off to die. Did I miss anything out?'

The Doctor shook his head to dismiss one point.

'They won't be able to hypnotise _me_. And, you know, I may be able to help prevent them from doing the same to you.'

'Go on!' said John, impressed, as the Time Lord produced a small double-sided mirror from his pocket.

'Just concentrate on the mirror …' began the Doctor.


	3. Chapter 3

**FIVE**

John blinked. Had it worked? The Doctor sat opposite on another camp bed, looking tired, the spinning gadget out of sight.

'Did it work? Am I vampire-proof?'

The Doctor cocked an eyebrow, wryly.

'If ten minutes of deep hypnosis is effective, then yes you are. Mind you, it took nearly twenty to get you into a suggestible state. You appear to have the natural suggestibility of a housebrick!'

Pausing, John realised that if the protective procedure took that long, then helping other Trevilho defenders would take too much time. Not only that, the Time Lord was visibly tired. They both needed sleep.

John shook his head, took off his outer clothes, put them under the pillow, lay on the bed and was asleep within minutes. His last image was of the Doctor, sitting on his camp bed, deep in thought, fingers steepled under his chin.

'Wake up there!' said an unfamiliar voice, shaking John's shoulder. The young officer came awake with a sudden start, half-remembering a disturbing dream about revolving mirrors, reaching for a gun that wasn't there, then clenching his fist to strike out –

'Hey, take it easy. Time for stew, if you want a bit of it. They're serving in the canteen down the hall,' said the stranger, a civilian with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

'Ah, the sleeper awakes,' said the Doctor, strolling back into the dormitory with two bowls of stew and slices of black bread, looking much refreshed by a few hours sleep. 'Here, try this, most invigorating.'

The vegetable stew went down well with the hungry officer. He was less sure about the black bread, taking small bites in between eating the thick soup.

'We need to get a look inside that mine,' said the Doctor quietly, standing in front of John and also sipping soup.

The look on the younger man's face was comical; his eyes almost came out of their sockets in disbelief.

'What! Doctor, there are a lot of words in that sentence I don't like – "we", "need", "inside that mine".'

The Doctor nodded.

'Nevertheless, I intend to get inside. At present nobody in Trivelho knows what they are dealing with and you can't theorise without data.'

John suddenly lost his appetite.

'Doctor, the reason they don't know what the vampires are doing is because nobody who goes into that mine comes out again!'

The Time Lord stroked his chin.

'Perhaps, perhaps not. If possible we need to open a dialogue with the Cadaverites.'

John abandoned his bowl and stood up to whisper urgently.

'Don't tell the Russians that, for Heaven's sake! That doctor is only being open about what the others feel, that we're lying and spying in equal amounts. Your lecture didn't carry the audience, Doctor, and saying you're going to speak to these killer creatures will get us locked up.'

'John,' sighed the Doctor, explaining patiently. 'I will not stand by and see these creatures annihilated without at least trying to communicate with them. Genocide is a crime I utterly abhor.'

Privately the Doctor remembered the conclusion to his encounter with the Silurians, when the Brigadier had blown up the intelligent reptiles in their caves. Maybe such an outcome was inevitable here in the Soviet Union, given their ruthless bent with potential challenges to the regime, but he wasn't going to simply let it happen, unprotesting.

An idea came to John.

'The BTR! Kopensky said it's still up at the mine. It has a radio fitted.'

Enlightenment dawned.

'I see. We claim to be going to retrieve this BTR in order to reclaim the radio. What is a BTR, anyway?'

John explained: an eight-wheeled armoured personnel carrier, nicknamed a "coffin" by their Russian crews due to the shape. The Doctor nodded, seeing the possibility of a diversionary trip.

'By the way, John, you're attracting attention in your own right,' he warned. 'Slips in idiom. Let me do the talking when we go back, and follow my lead. Don't be surprised at anything I might say.'

By the time they returned to the mayor's office, only Zelinski and two other KGB men were present, one of them Zhadov, the third a small, lithe man with darting, birdlike eyes. A pair of the surviving MVD soldiers, standing alongside the doorway inside the room, fell in behind John.

'Comrade Kuznetz,' said the KGB man, far too politely. 'You have a suggestion, I take it?'

'There is a radio in the armoured personnel transporter abandoned at the mine,' stated the Doctor. 'We intend to go and retrieve it.'

'Which? Radio or BTR?' asked Zhadov, clutching an AK47 in a businesslike manner across his lap.

'Both.'

Zelinski smiled, with all the humour of a shark.

'Right, your own personal transport out of the mine and across the cordon. Do you really expect me to allow you to leave!'

'Well, yes, actually,' replied John, ingenuously. Zelinski frowned in annoyance.

'He –' and his nicotine-browned forefinger pointed straight at the Doctor. 'He can go, on his own. You –' another stab from the finger at John ' – can stay here as guarantor.'

'Why me!' asked John. He recognised the other man's sense of holding a trump card.

'Because while Agent Kuznetz is on file, you are not. You are a spy!'

All three of the KGB agents stared hard at John, who returned a bland and disdainful look. They must have doubts, because if they were certain he was a spy, then he'd be under arrest by now.

'My dear chap, of course he's a spy!' declared the Doctor loudly.

Had John not been forewarned, his surprise would have given him away instantly and despite the preparedness, he felt his stomach flip over. The Doctor, on the other hand, seemed quite impossibly jolly.

'What? What did you say?' asked the man with the AK47. Zelinski peered closely at both men. The silence in the room became so pronounced that the carriage clock on a sideboard could be heard clearly, ticking the seconds away.

'I said, of course Ivan Izvestilnyuk is a spy. That was his job. However, Vanya is an agent of the GRU, not the KGB. So you won't have him on your files.'

'GRU. Main Intelligence Administration. Military, eh?' mused Zhadov, cradling the gun. Zelinski remained silent, though his jaw clenched.

John might have been thrown by the stupefied response of the three men opposite. The Doctor, however, fully realised what he'd done. The GRU formed an intelligence organisation based on the Soviet military, rather than an espionage organisation per se, such as the KGB. The two organisations were separate and, frequently, mutually hostile, refusing to co-operate or share data. Their bureaucratic inertia would operate in favour of the two time travellers

'Eighth Directorate,' agreed the Doctor. His offhand manner implied that the KGB agents ought to know what the Eighth Directorate did. When they failed to respond he gave a sigh and rolled his eyes – if he'd been wearing his cape it would have been thrown back in a dramatic gesture.

'Eighth Directorate? You know, responsible for spying on NATO countries? Captain Izvestnilyuk infiltrated the British Army and posed as an officer for several years, reporting back to Moscow.'

Zelinski's face expressed surprise, caution and disbelief all at once.His colleagues were less extreme, merely nodding in acknowledgement.

'Yes, exactly, quite right,' said John, joining in and beginning to enjoy himself in the persona of a spy.

'So, unfortunately, he may have acquired a few foibles from the milieu he operated in. I'm sure you understand,' continued the Doctor, making a conciliatory gesture with his hand.

'The fascist running dogs infected me with their bourgeouis behaviour,' admitted John, biting his cheek to avoid smiling.

'Very well! You can go to the mine –' and here Zelinski pointed to the Doctor. 'You will stay here in Trevilho!' indicating John this time.

'The Doctor needs an escort,' protested the officer, feeling a familiar flush in his cheeks, heralding a loss of temper. Any argument was stalled when the Time Lord placed a hand on John's arm, shaking his head gently.

'No, I'll be fine on my own. In fact I prefer it this way.'

'You're not getting a vehicle,' said Zelinski, pettily. 'We don't have fuel to spare.'

'Good - I don't want one. The noise would alert those creatures in the mine to my arrival.'

With that parting shot, he was gone, abruptly. Several minutes later, which implied a delay downstairs, John watched the tall, white-haired figure from an upstairs window, heading out across the square to the mine road at a considerable pace.

The Doctor didn't feel quite as confident as he looked. Originally he planned to travel by jeep, completing the last part of the journey on foot. To obtain transport against Zelinski's wishes would be difficult, perhaps not possible, and would eat into the time left. Travel on foot it was, then, a reliable method if slower than he liked. He patted his hip pocket, recipient of a map courtesy of Evgeniy Klimentov, who caught him in passing on the stairs. The Time Lord had cause to be thankful for this chance meeting later on. Avtandil had approached him at the top of the steps outside, catching him alone, pressing a small, flat package into the Doctor's hand.

'My family always took this into battle against the infidel. Turks, Nazi's – try it on these vampires.'

The wooden tenements and stone official buildings around the town square became low wooden huts further on, housing individual families, and then came the zone of damage beyond, where the vampire creatures fought the town's defenders. Hundreds of houses and huts had been destroyed by dynamite and fire, leaving the roadway scattered with soot, splinters and other light debris. This desolate band of ashy ruins petered out quickly, snow lying on the oldest of them. Fresh snow blown onto the road made it's surface occasionally treacherous, however charming the effect in aesthetic terms. Strange, thin, non-human footprints were still visible on the muddy ruts in the road itself, and on patches of snow alongside the road. The Doctor kept an eye on these whilst walking, noting how the prints were spaced out to judge stride and therefore height, where the heel and toes dug in as evidence of speed, how deep the depressions were to gain an idea of weight.

He met very few people on his journey. Most of the town's population, he guessed, were sleeping in the daytime to be ready for the struggle to come that night, hiding, or trying to get past the cordon around the town. Nobody in their right mind would head for the mine either, he told himself with grim amusement, seeing an elderly man sporting an immense white moustache, sitting on a stool in front of a crude brazier, stare at this mysterious stranger on the road out of town.

'Here! Where are you going!' called the man, emphasising his point with a shotgun. 'That's the mine road.'

'The mine is where I wish to go. We need the radio left up there,' explained the Doctor.

'Oh aye?' said the elderly gunman, eyeing the other warily. 'Says who?' he added after a moment.

'Comrade Zelinski says so.'

'Oh! Oh. That's different. Do you need a guide?'

'No. No, thank you. I only need to follow the road.'

'I could come with you, if you like. I ain't scared. The Jerries didn't scare me. The Yankees don't scare me. These fish-belly-coloured blood-suckers don't scare me.'

'Er – quite. No, no thank you again. I shall be safe in daylight.'

'Better get a move on, then, mate. Daylight don't last long up here. Oh – stick to the road. There's old tin-mine workings and shafts scattered about and you won't see 'em because of the snow.'

He gave the Doctor a cheery wave and went back to warming his hands at the brazier.

'Yes. Yes, er, quite.'

'And watch out in these ruins. There's some of them things hiding in the dark, down where the sun can't get 'em.'

The Doctor's footsteps took him further along the road, enabling him to admire the snowy countryside, the thick fir forests and cloudless blue skies, and his enjoyment of the countyside was dimmed only by what lay at the end of his trip.

'Wonderful scenery,' he murmured to himself. 'Lovely people. _Dreadful _political system.'

On he plodded. The mine road inclined slowly upwards, gradually becoming sunken between great banks of piled earth and snow. A darker patch of white in the ditch alongside the road caught the Doctor's eye, causing him to pause and move over to investigate.

At first glance the object appeared to be wrinkled bedlinen, twisted into a human caricature; a caricature with horribly contorted features, and clenched fists. With a start of surprise the Doctor realised he was looking at a dead vampire. Deciding that he needed to gather data, he climbed down into the ditch, standing over the body, giving it a poke with his sonic screwdriver. Dry skin flaked off where he pushed, and the slight pressure made the whole corpse move.

'Dessicated,' said the Doctor to himself. 'Completely dried out. Killed by ultra-violet, grilled by infra-red. Oh what we have to thank the sun for.'

Standing still momentarily (it remained too cold not to be moving for long, despite the sun) he mused as to why the single creature lay fallen in the ditch. Perhaps it was the first Cadaverite to venture outside into the open air, getting caught by daylight beyond the sheltering darkness of the mine, dying within seconds in the ultra-violet barrage. Nothing definitive suggested itself, so he continued walking. The high banks climbed higher, the road swept around and the Doctor found himself standing at the entrance to Nickel Extraction Combine Number One.

The whole site lay in an old, oblong quarry, whose steep sides prevented snow from lying, and which prevented the mine workings from being seen on the level ground above. To his left stood a small prefabricated building, with the MVD insignia painted on the door, which stood ajar. A broken window stared blankly out at the world.

'Hello?' he called, pushing the door fully open. No reply. Not that he expected one, not really. An overturned mug on the floor, lying amongst stools and a desk, gave the only clue to whatever sinister events the room had witnessed.

Back outside again, the Doctor looked to see the mine entrance, which was blocked from view by what looked like the power plant, and beyond that the garage where the mine vehicles were kept. The whole area possessed an air of abandonment and once again nobody could be seen. The abandoned BTR stood away in the open, a good five hundred metres off, parked in the space between the bulk hopper and settling ponds.

'Later,' said the Time Lord to himself and the empty mine workings. His first course of business was to see if any of the mine staff survived, possibly hiding in the buildings. Five minutes later he concluded that if any survivors were still there, they were deliberately hiding. Back to the BTR in it's isolated position, then, sitting out in the middle of the quarry.

'Nowhere for those with malicious intent to hide, at least,' said the Doctor to himself. 'First things first: the radio.'

After all, he needed to show something to the highly suspicious Zelinski back in Trivelho, explaining the whole journey away as a trip to get the radio and nothing at all about communicating with the Cadaverites.

The big, boat-shaped vehicle had no conventional doors; there were hatches on each side, which were secured from the inside. Covers for the front windows were propped open, revealing an empty driver's cab. A pair of hatches stood upright on the top deck, in front of a gun-turret looking like an inverted saucepan. The Doctor hauled himself up by climbing on a wheel, standing on the top deck and peering into the forbidding darkness of the interior.

'In for a penny, in for a pound,' he muttered to himself and dropped into the gloom. A strange, unpleasant, penetrating stink he gradually recognised as cordite permeated the vehicle, which was cramped and full of military kit; no radio, however. Taking a step further forward, towards the rear of the BTR, he nearly trod on a number of empty cartridge cases.

Sudden movement at the rear of the vehicle made him stop and listen.

A heap of discarded military fatigue lying there coats silently rose and fell apart, revealing white, writhing limbs. Slowly, one of the Cadaverites stood up, or as nearly as it could in the cramped interior. Glaring red eyes focussed on the Doctor, and long, thin arms reached out.

'I'm a friend,' said the Doctor, calmly, showing that his hands were empty. 'I come in peace,' he added.

The bone-white creature opened it's mouth wide, revealing an impressive array of teeth, hissed like a kettle on the boil and lunged at the Doctor, who immediately stepped backwards, only to slip on the empty cartridge cases and fall backwards to the floor. Before he could move again the creature pounced.

**SIX**

'So, how do you make silver bullets?' asked the Mayor.

John sighed. He patently lacked the Doctor's ability to influence by implication, and his patience. The latter lack meant getting away from Zelinski, who would end up with a broken jaw otherwise.

'You can't just melt this lot down and dip whole bullets in it,' he said, indicating the various pieces of silver scattered on the tarpaulin atop the conference table. The assembled Russians, a good two dozen of them, looked puzzled.

'If you do that, the bullet's calibre will be increased. Your weapon will jam. Dipping only the very tip of the bullet will mean the silver vapourises during it's trip down the barrel, fouling the lands and grooves. Jam again.'

Ooh's and aah's from the listeners. A few looked impressed, a few – including the citric female doctor – looked unconvinced.

John continued: a bullet-mould making whole replacement bullets would be needed, plus an unseating tool to remove the normal bullets from rounds –

'This is Trivelho, Agent Izvestilnyuk, not the Tula Arsenal!' interrupted one of the MVD soldiers. 'We don't have any such things.'

'I have,' said a familiar voice, interrupting the interrupter. It was Semyon, the weary leader of the patrol that had captured John and the Doctor. 'For my hunting rifle.'

'Great! One problem solved. Can you melt the silver down too? Good. Take some of this silver and get making rifle rounds.'

Semyon took a small silver plate and left for home and his bullet making press.

'Very good. One person with one rifle. Whatever next!' commented the female doctor.

'Recall your Lenin,' retorted John, recalling Lenin's quotes from one of the history modules on his course, along the lines of one man being able to make five drawing-pins in a day but a production line of five men being able to make five thousand. 'Doctor -?'

'Natashka Irinovna,' replied the woman, looking uncomfortable at the jibe about Lenin.

'Shotgun shells, unlike rifle rounds, are relatively easy to alter. Open the tube at the top, pour out half the shot, replace with bits of silver - we don't even need to melt it down – and reseal the tube. We set up a line – one man opens, one man pours, one man replaces with silver and the last one seals up again.'

That impressed the Russians, though John didn't know if they liked the idea or the quote from Lenin more. Kopensky set about organising half a dozen men into the Shotgun Shell Refilling Collective, as he dubbed it. The armour of Bolshevik jargon seemed to have worn off him, leaving a man altogether more prepared for compromise and innovation.

Bondarski, the mayor, nodded in appreciation.

'Anything else?' he asked, a note of eagerness in his voice.

Yes, replied John, still thinking. To carry out his next idea meant using delicate hand-drilling equipment, and industrial abrasives.

'The mining factory,' suggested a large bald man, wearing small steel-framed glasses, which he polished at intervals whilst listening. 'We have both types of equipment, plus the electrical power to use them. I am the senior foreman, and have the keys to get us in.'

Kopensky volunteered four other people to assist, including Senior Foreman Osip, Natashka Irinovna, an MVD soldier and a brawny mine-worker dubbed "Shovels". Osip led them across the town square, where a few people had begun to set up impromptu shelters already; the Doctor's recommendation seemed to have been accepted. They took a belt of machine-gun ammunition and magazines of ammuntion for AK-47's.

Inside the factory, sunlight poured in from a glass roof. The place smelt of oil and dust, smells associated with machinery at work and made more poignant by the utter silence and stillness.

'What is your idea, Comrade Izvestilnyuk?' asked Osip.

'Simple enough. Firstly, we file the tip of each bullet flat.'

Osip nodded.

'Yes, yes, there are grinding wheels, over in the corner behind the painted blue line. They can do that.'

'Good enough. Once the tip is flat, we hold the bullet vertical and drill down into the flattened area, using a bit about – oh, say one-sixteenth inch diameter. Two millimetres,' he added hastily, seeing incomprehension at the Imperial measurement. Osip nodded again, pointing to a row of workbenches and a vertical drill.

'Right. The molten silver is poured into the hole made by the drill. Any excess is filed off, and for extra effect we knock a cross into the top of the bullet with a chisel.'

Predictably, Natashka took exception to this.

'Stupid religious Christian nonsense!' Kopensky caught her eye and coughed diplomatically.

'Er, not quite, Natashka Irinovna. A bullet so altered will fragment inside the target, causing very severe wounds.'

'Correct,' said John. 'The silver is prevented from vapourising, or fouling the barrel or breech. When the round hits it's target, one of these leech creatures hopefully, the silver gets projected forward, creating a dum-dum effect.'

Natashka looked thoughtful at this news. She glanced at Kopensky, then at John.

'The whole thing is completely against the Geneva Convention, doctor,' confirmed John. 'Though I doubt our opponents will bother to complain.'

They set to with a will, working out a routine over their first half-hour. Gradually, the pile of altered bullets grew larger, until they had run out of silver.

'One belt of machine-gun ammunition and two hundred Kalashnikov rounds,' declared Kopensky, greatly pleased. 'We will issue the bullets in clips of ten. Now we really have the ability to kill those vile creatures!'

Great, thought John sardonically. Glad to have made your day.

Shovels carried the magazines and belt of bullets, ambling along with John at the back of the group as they left the factory and returned to the town hall. By this time, not even an hour after they first traversed the town square, more families had arrived.

'Think they know something we don't?' asked Shovels. 'Holy mother, am I glad the family live in Leningrad.'

'You're not local?' asked John. Shovels shrugged his big shoulders, making the ammunition belt dance on his back.

'I live here when I'm doing shiftwork at the mine. Otherwise it's back in Leningrad, where my lad will be drinking himself silly and chasing skirts without me to keep him in line, so let's hope this whole business gets finished soon, eh?'

'Dead right,' replied John, secretly amused at the mundaneness of Shovel's worries. The smug feeling wore off rapidly when nobody in the town hall admitted seeing the Doctor return.

'How long is it until nightfall?' asked John, getting agitated. "Soon" was the composite answer from different people. "Too soon", said Semyon, half-dozing on a chair in the marbled foyer, cradling a rifle.

'Right,' muttered John. 'I'll give him ten minutes longer.' Seeing an abandoned AK47 lying under a table, he took it, jingling a pocketful of appropriated rounds from the factory that had somehow stuck to his fingers. Semyon watched him without moving or commenting.

'How long does it take to get to the mine on foot?' asked John, aware his weapon-stealing had been witnessed.

'Half an hour,' said Semyon, closing his eyes. 'Longer in the dark.'

Falling backwards hurt the Doctor, knocking the wind out of him on the hard metal floor, an indignity he might have suffered with impunity if the circumstances were not so dangerous. Without room to roll sideways, and no space to flip backwards, he was unable to avoid the attack of the Cadaverite.

The squalling creature landed on top of him, surprisingly light, breathing horrid fumes that denoted an apalling diet, incisors clashing together. Before the Doctor could react, the attacker's squealing rose to a shriek, it's skin blistered into great red blotches and it fell backwards into the darkened interior of the BTR.

'Sunlight!' realised the Time Lord. His fall had carried him into the sunlight, faint and feeble yet still a lifesaver, that shone into the body of the BTR through the open hatch above.

_Obey! c_ame a familiar sensation, that of mental communication. So rare amongst humans, that the Doctor was unready for it. He slowly regained his feet, looking at the stricken Cadaverite, shaking in agony on the vehicle floor.

_Obey, and come to me, slave._

'I most certainly will not!' replied the Doctor, treating the creature with caution.

_Not human!_ came the Cadaverite's startled realisation.

'Correct, I am not human. Why did you attack me?'

_This one is dying, trapped without food, now scorched by the bad light. You were consumable._

'This is monstrous!' exclaimed the Doctor, genuinely horrified at what he heard. 'Cadaverites do not kill to feed off others.'

_You will learn, stranger_, projected the dying alien. Unfamiliar with this species' mental patterns, the Doctor felt sure a laugh came at the end of that statement, a mental laugh of considerable venom.

'Tell me what you mean –' he began, then stopped, seeing that the Cadaverite lay still and silent, twisted into a painful death-throe.

'Entirely un-necessary,' he mused quietly to himself, saddened as always by death. '"Consumable" – why use that concept, I wonder?'

Casting around, he spotted the radio, a sturdy military version bolted to the vehicle chassis. Using the sonic screwdriver allowed him to remove it in thirty seconds, able to be removed from the personnel carrier if need be. The next pressing issue to be faced was communicating with the Cadaverites in the mine.

The light outside, when the Doctor clambered out of the dark vehicle interior, felt less intense than before. Dusk threatened; a pale rose tinted the sky above, indicating that the sun would soon be setting.

'But screw your courage to the sticking place,' muttered the Doctor to himself, not under any illusions about how dangerous the task ahead would be. A jump to the ground from the BTR's top deck allowed him to move towards the mine entrance behind the settling ponds' concrete apron. Cover meant protection from prying eyes, both useful and comforting. Despite the great empty, motionless gantries, conveyor belts, hoppers, wash chambers and rollers to his left, the Doctor felt any threat came from the mine entrance.

Hopping over the low concrete apron of the settling pond, to land in ankle-deep sludge, the Doctor tutted in annoyance. At least his good, hand-stitched shoes were safely back in the TARDIS. He slowly waded to the other side, his feet making obscene noises in the plastic muck.

Ahead loomed the vehicle park, a huge shedlike building that housed all sorts of bulldozers, dump trucks, tractors, drills and mysterious motorised equipment. The Doctor scurried along the west side of the structure before poking a wary nose beyond the wall.

One hundred metres away lay the mine entrance. This was no minor accessway; after a hundred years of exploitation the opening stood thirty feet tall and at least fifty across. Light railway tracks entered on the side nearest the Doctor; great arrays of conveyor belts, boxed-in by wire cagework, stalked out of the far side on stilt-like metal legs, heading over to the deserted processing area.

'Step into my parlour,' said the Doctor to the silent mine, half-amused at his analogy.

The closer he got to the entrance, the larger it grew. Sixty feet high and a hundred across, at a rough estimate. Cables and lamps were stapled into the rock ten feet above ground leve, disappearing into the mine and casting a faint glow into the quarry, a sure sign that night approached.

'Hello!' called the Doctor, loudly, putting all the fearless intonation he could muster into the single word. "Helloooooo" echoed the tunnel. "Hellooo" echoed the quarry walls.

_Hello_, came a Cadaverite greeting. _Hello not-human_.

Straightening his spine, the Doctor boldly walked into the mine. "Strode" rather than "walked" would be more accurate, since it conveyed the import the Doctor hoped he possessed. There was little he could do from now on to prevent hostile action against himself, all the more so if what he suspected about these creatures was true.

The tunnel divided into three within fifty metres of the entrance, overhead conveyor belts arcing to deliver their payload to the world outside, silent and still. The miners who excavated this particular mine had been able to follow veins of nickel horizontally, going underground when the quarried ores were exhausted, without needing to sink any deep vertical shafts. Given his encounter with mines at Llanfairfach, of recent memory, the Time Lord felt happier walking instead of descending in a cage.

'Eeny meeny miny mo,' he declared, deadpan, pointing at each entrance in turn, and ending up with the middle one. Within seconds of moving forward he realised there were faint footsteps keeping pace with him, subtle padding noises that might originate from unshod feet on a rocky surface.

One thing he felt grateful for was the plentiful supply of light. The quarry's electrical plant must still be working, generating power for the lighting systems in the mine, because the uninterrupted trails of bulbs, dangling from cables on the tunnel walls, remained brightly illuminated, banishing darkness. Nor were the tunnels confined or claustrophobic; quite the opposite. A double-decker bus might have driven along the main tunnels without any problem, four-abreast if need be. A novitiate in the mine needed to keep an eye out for channels in the floor permitting cables or drainage to cross the roadway, an omission the Doctor suffered twice at the cost of a grazed shin.

Moving down an inclined slope, which turned back on itself in a hairpin and then hairpin-turned again, the Doctor slowed, not being sure this was the correct way.

_Keep moving_, came the silent communication from his unseen hosts.

Okay, this _is_ the right way to go, he commented to himself. At around thirty metres lower than the entrance, to judge by the difference in air pressure here.

A faint whiff of organic corruption eddied out from an unlit gallery to his side, swirling briefly around him, nearly making him start in surprise, which would have been a mistake. Considering that he was already under observation, from the nearly-silent trackers, no reaction to any unexpected stimuli was the preferred option. If the Cadaverites suspected that he suspected – well, a quick death would be the easy way out.

Ahead, after running level again, the tunnel came to a T-junction. The new tunnel ran past to either side for hundreds of metres, punctuated every fifty metres by a new tunnel opening.

_Left_, instructed the watchers. Left it was, then, past abandoned excavation machinery, pneumatic drills, small electric carts and portable lighting stands, a few of which displayed bright metallic scars on their paintwork. Stopping to examine the detritus more closely, the Doctor caught a glimpse of reflections in the metalwork, reflections of creatures abnormally pale and thin. He also noticed cartridge cases on the floor here, about a dozen or so. A few of the MVD soldiers made it this far, he realised, straightening up and pretending not to notice the silent, stealthy pursuit.

No more mental communications came until he reached the end of the tunnel, where another one began at right angles. Guessing that this was the only option he could take, the Doctor moved along it.

This tunnel had narrowed down from the huge entranceways. A single truck could move down this one, alongside the motionless conveyor belt running at hip-height. Before the things tracking him could come round the corner, the Doctor snatched up a phone from the bright yellow emergency box, set a few metres into the tunnel on the right hand side. Yes, there was still a signal. He replaced the phone with equal haste – best not to alarm the Cadaverites.

Abruptly, the tunnel became a chamber, where countless irregular columns supported the roof, which remained at the same height. Loose rock lay piled or swept up around the columns. More abandoned machinery stood neglected here, where there were fewer lights. Which must mean this gallery had been mined of all it's nickel and left behind, mused the Doctor. There ought to be a continuation of the tunnel – aha! There it was! Almost opposite the tunnel he'd entered by. He nearly moved on before noticing a slightly darker patch of chamber wall to the right.

Their footsteps are still at least fifty metres away, calculated the Doctor. Long enough to examine briefly.

The darker patch turned out to be a narrow tunnel, only large enough for a single person to traverse, without any lighting that he could see. Faint light from this exhausted gallery allowed him to look only twenty metres within the passageway.

Scuffling sounds drawing nearer sent him striding across the gallery to the tunnel entrance, wondering why such a ridiculously –

- it must be an escape route, he realised. In case of accident in here, or an adjacent gallery, the narrow passage would enable miners to escape.

Back in the better-lit and larger tunnel, the Doctor felt a cold draught of air swirl up around his feet, reaching his neck.

'Peculiar!' he said to nobody. 'There shouldn't be air currents like that in here, not at this depth and distance from the entrance.'

Also, pointedly, this mine didn't have any extraction equipment for cleaning the mine air. A series of eddies like that might be caused by the mine architecture and design being altered by the blasting that exposed the Cadaverites.

Another hairpin descent took him still lower after a minute of walking. The rock walls here were lighter in colour than the previous ones. After a few metres, ragged tarpaulins hung from hooks screwed into the tunnel walls blocked his way. Batting each one aside dislodged quantities of dust. After these came a series of warning signs "DANGER! BLASTING IN PROGRESS!" "DANGER! EXPLOSIVES!" "DANGER! DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT UNTIL PERMISSION IS GIVEN!"

This, realised the Doctor, this zone was where the mine engineers had blown a new gallery. And found an underground cavern unsuspected and undetected on any chart or geological survey.

A number of hard hats lay on the tunnel floor ahead of him. The emergency phone, in the yellow and black-striped box secured to the tunnel wall, dangled limply on it's cord, twisting slowly. Whatever happened here, in reality days ago, might only have occurred minutes before. Sealed off here underground, divorced from daylight, the mine environment held to a strangely timeless present.

'Hello?' called the Doctor, loudly and (he hoped) confidently. A faint echo, dulled by the tarpaulins behind, rang in the damp, dead mine air.

_Forward_, came the silent call.

'Once more unto the breach,' announced the Doctor to the hidden watchers doubtless at his back. The tarpaulins whispered and rustled, shedding dust. He walked forward, to a very crudely excavated gallery that ran at right angles to the better-finished tunnel behind him, with great bites taken out of it's far wall by explosives. Dust and rubble lay all along the tunnel floor, marked with innumerable footprints, both Cadaverite and human.

In the centre of the mine gallery, looming like a gaping mouth, dark and sinister, sat the opening into the cavern beyond. Pale figures bobbed and ducked at the entrance.

_Come here, non-human_, they whispered to his mind.

The cavern, once he crossed the threshold, was every bit as dark and lightless as he expected. Illumination was limited to the glow from the entrance cast by lights in the tunnel, and the glaring red eyes dotted all around that closed in remorselessly.

'I come in peace, to negotiate,' he announced. The red eyes got closer. 'You must listen to me!' Still they closed in, near enough for him to hear their owner's breathing. 'The humans above are able to obliterate you – and you are the last of your race!' he concluded, desperately.

A sudden phalanx of white, taloned arms reached out for him, dragging him to the floor …

Zelinski elbowed aside the MVD sentry at the entrance to the cellar stairs, well aware that nobody here would dare to shoot or even challenge him.

'Emergency business,' he grated in passing, happy to get out of the roasting March sunshine, surely a record for this season and month. Then it was on to a supposedly deserted basement, and a supposedly deserted room, and their entirely concrete and absolute captive.

Using the key to unlock the door, Zelinski stopped at the threshold to examine the interior: huge mahogany table with Hideous Vampire Monster secured via steel cable; several flimsy stools; shoddy table supporting KGB-issue radio; radio; miscellaneous notebooks, pencils, codebooks, erasers, rulers and sharpeners.

Time to make a report.

An impatient John hopped from one foot to the other. The AK47 clutched in his hands looked toylike, and he flicked the selector switch out of further impatience.

'Look, mate, dancing like that isn't going to get the job done any quicker,' said the mechanic, sounding half-amused and half-annoyed. 'In fact, given your total lack of ability to manage a beat, which is distracting my attention, the job will take longer.'

The criticism stilled John's awkward prancing. He felt like simultaneously patting and punching himself: the compliment for finding a workshop-cum-shack behind the mine factory, and a mechanic willing to fix one of the battered caterpillar tractors sitting idle there; the chastisement for finding the slowest, most arthritic mechanic and the most decrepit tracked vehicle in existence.

Long, slow minutes passed. The mechanic's assistant, a brawny middle-aged woman with a maze of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, treated John to a drink. Rashly, he drank it in one long gulp, anticipating the gassy hit of a lemonade swill. Instead his throat closed up as if unseen hands were clutching at it and his eyes watered, causing a rapid blinking.

'Ooh. I'm impressed. Down in one. Not many can manage that,' commented the woman. John, temporarily unable to speak, merely nodded, realising that he'd been handed a glass of neat vodka. Seeking to divert his attention whilst the alcohol gradually relented of it's death-grip on his throat, he wandered over to the rear of the big, delapidated shack. A bizarre stretched motorbike-hybrid crossed with caterpillar tracks caught his eye, and he turned to the woman, who noted his interest.

'That, love, is a Kettenkrad. The Fritzes used them. Why, I don't know. You'd be better off in a Gaz, all those overlapping wheels just trap ice and stones.'

"Fritzes" must equate to the Wehrmacht, of World War Two, realised John. Feeling a return of feeling to his vocal cords, he pointed at a large shed on skis.

'And what's that thing! Since when did we start putting outhouses on skids?'

This earned him a frosty look from the woman. Rather belatedly John realised that she might well have lived through the Second World War up here in the frozen north, fighting off the Nazi hordes. And the Finns, though he was a bit hazy about the Scandinavian part of the Eastern front.

'This –' and she smacked the metal hull with a resounding thump – ' – is an Aerosan, love. Built locally. "Outhouse on skids" indeed!' She stopped to look closely at John, who gave her his best winning smile. 'That wooden cross on the back isn't a crucifix, love, it's a propellor. This little darling used to scoot over the snow in hot pursuit of the Nazi swine. See those chisel marks on the door? Each one of those is a dead Nazi.'

'The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi,' paraphrased John, mangling a John Wayne line. The beefy woman perked up at this, nodding to herself.

'There. Done,' announced the mechanic, his wrinkled walnut of a face creasing up in a smug grin. 'Although why you'd want –'

'Yesyesyes,' snapped John in reply, whisking the keys up from the mudguard top, brushing past the boiler-suited artisan, and dropping heavily into the frayed bucket seat. He turned the keys and the neglected, ancient diesel coughed and rumbled into life. Fumbling across the dashboard, he threw switches until the headlights came on and gleamed into the dusky town streets.

The mechanic leaned into the cab.

'Don't over-rev, or you'll kill the engine – fan's not working properly. Plus, she won't do more than fifteen kilometres an hour, unless you get a following wind on a downhill stretch.'

Nodding at the well-meant sarcasm, John let in the clutch and the ungainly brute of a machine lurched forward.

'Goodbye, love!' called the woman, and John, in a moment of inspiration, blew her a kiss.


	4. Chapter 4

**SEVEN**

Dampness.

Gritty dampness.

Scouring gritty dampness being grated over his forehead –

'I say, would you mind not doing that?' asked the Doctor, drawing a deep breath and pawing feebly at the cloth being draped over his face.

A hiss of indrawn breath came from the darkness beyond, the sign of a ministrant paying attention to his words.

'Anya! Anya! He's awake!' came the urgent, freighted whisper from a woman, speaking not far in front of him. 'Bring me the water. Quickly now!'

'Here you are, Masha,' said a second female voice. Liquid gurgled in the darkness, slopping around in a container. Metal scraped against metal, then the Time Lord found a cold semi-circle pressed against his mouth. Water ran from the container, and he swallowed gratefully, rinsing away the feel of grit and thirst.

The dirty rag across his face fell away, permitting a look into the ambient darkness beyond. After the total lack of light of an invalid he discovered that the minute amount of illumination seeping into the cavern from lighted tunnels allowed a patient watcher to discern everything going on about them, if in subdued tones.

There were two women fussing over him, an older one with short hair, and a younger one with much longer hair, who seemed to be almost deranged with fear. The older woman occasionally brought the younger one into line with a cuff over the head.

'Please,' he croaked, not wanting to spark a squabble. 'Don't argue over me. I'm not worth it.'

'Oh yes you are, friend,' said the older woman (Masha?). 'Those horrid Grandfather Frosts haven't bothered to take prisoners so far, apart from you. Instead of ripping you apart, bathing in your blood or turning you into a slave, they throw you in here, telling us to "keep you". Keep you! Whatever that might mean!'

The Doctor wondered that himself. The Cadaverites could have killed him with ease, if they so intended, simply by ripping him apart by sheer force of numbers in the cavern once he'd entered. But no, they hadn't – even if it seemed as if they were going to. No. Here he was, dizzy and nauseous from being hit on the head, yet far from being dead or injured.

So. Alive, then. They wanted him alive, most likely to answer an interrogation, to provide answers that creatures only able to move above-ground in darkness could not know. Becoming more alert, the Doctor examined his surroundings, discovering that he lay against the wall of a narrow cave or fissure in the cavern, so narrow that his legs reached the other side.

'What are you two doing at liberty?' he asked the two women. Masha, the elder, answered for both of them.

'Looking after _them_,' she said, pointing to the rear of the fissure. Following the pointing finger, the Doctor's eyes adjusted to the lack of light and he recognised a group of people, mixed adults and children, standing upright and still, silent and staring blankly straight ahead. 'We have to give them water, make sure they don't fall or injure themselves, walk them around every few hours.'

'Forty of them, now. There were seventy when we came in to begin with,' said Anya, shivering. 'They get called when the monsters want to feed, and they aren't seen alive again.'

Curiosity getting the better of him, the Doctor got to his feet, a little unsteadily, and carefully walked to the group of silent, entranced people.

'Deep hypnosis,' he muttered to himself, waving a hand in front of the nearest victim, a grey-haired woman. 'No reaction. Pupillary reflex?' and he shone a narrow beam of light from his sonic screwdriver into the woman's eyes. 'Ah! Not completely under, then.'

Rubbing his chin, thinking hard, the Doctor walked back to Masha and Anya, both crouched on the cave floor, huddled up to one another for security.

'What's so different about you, that they don't kill you?' asked Masha. 'Me and Anya here, we're just left alive to give these sleepers water and exercise them. What's so different about you?'

'I didn't get taken by the Cadaverites. I came to try and reason with them,' explained the Time Lord.

'Oh! You silly man! All these monsters do is kill and injure folk,' scolded Masha.

'Yes, quite,' acknowledged the Doctor ruefully, rubbing his tender scalp. 'Rather reckless, maybe, in hindsight. I didn't expect them to be so – hostile.'

_Not-human, come out_, came a peremptory mental hail. Pale white sentries bobbed at the entrance of the fissure, waiting to escort him.

'Be patient, do nothing rash,' whispered the Doctor to Masha and Anya. The germ of an idea was forming in his mind.

'Don't you be stupid, they aren't about to kill you,' whispered Masha.

_Follow me._

'Alright, alright, I'm coming. Keep your hair on.' He managed to walk to the rock prison's exit unaided, even if his head did throb.

_Insolent animal! _A white fist swung at his ribs, winding him painfully.

'An idiomatic expression,' wheezed the Doctor, emerging from the fissure into the cavern proper, coughing noisily.

_Silence, and follow_.

The white figure ahead of him led the way sure-footedly over the rough floor. Within seconds of leaving the fissure and it's occupants, the Doctor found himself able to discern the outline of his escort, then the floor he walked upon and finally the cavern itself. A man might see the landscape around him by moonlight equally as well.

Bioluminescence! realised the Doctor. Moulds on the cavern walls and ceiling were radiating a faint glow, minute individually but sufficient overall to permit him to see the dimensions of the cavern, which was immense. It consisted of a long central hollow, easily several kilometres in length, with alternate branching sub-caverns opening off the main one. Overall, despite the roughness, the cavern interior spoke of excavation and deliberate construction, not the random erosion and weathering of nature.

Constructed. A gigantic amount of rock must have been removed to create a chamber so large, the Doctor immediately understood. Billions of tons, in a feat far beyond human capability. Yet the whole structure lay far underground, completely isolated from the surface, revealed only by the chance detonation of explosives in a mine tunnel.

_Turn here_, commanded the lead escort, moving to the left and into one of the huge chambers opening off the main cavern.

This part of the underground structure had elaborate calligraphy chiselled into the wall, in a script superficially similar to the Karausian's flowing style. Similar in style, utterly different in content; the Doctor couldn't read it. Great terraced steps rose on either side of the chamber, ascending to – living quarters? – cut into the rock. Straight ahead, the chamber ended in a stone dais, where a group of Cadaverites stood watching him hungrily.

_Kneel to the Great Ones, not-human_.

Aware that disobedience might bring casual death, the Doctor carefully went down on one knee, sweeping his left arm low across the floor, right arm folded across his middle. Good enough for Bess, he consoled himself.

_Come forward, that we may see what manner of creature you are_.

The group looked closely at the Doctor, who returned the scrutiny equally closely. Ten Cadaverites, backed by a half-circle of at least twenty armed with what might be adapted mining-tools, or simply edged and bladed weapons.

Two of the presumed dectet of leaders turned to face each other. Their telepathic conversation overspilled enough to allow the Doctor to "hear" them, in what amounted to mental eavesdropping.

_More than human._

_Not old as we are, yet old._

_A curiosity. _

_One with knowledge. Worth keeping alive. For the moment._

_Yes. For the moment. While we learn from it._

The whispered non-conversation stopped.

'Am I permitted to talk?' asked the Doctor. Nobody hit him, or forbade him, so he continued. 'I came to the mine to try and communicate with you, to find out what you wanted and why you attacked the humans.'

_How noble, not-human! How very noble. Rest assured, your sacrifice will enable us to learn more about humans and their world. _

_Yes. Their world. That is, it is their world for the moment._

_Meanwhile, we will communicate with you, and you will answer our questions._

'And if I refuse?' darted back the Doctor, beginning to lose his temper.

_We kill all human cattle in the mine_.

'This is outrageous!' snapped the Doctor, genuinely angry. Within seconds he forced his temper into check, using a series of calming Tibetan chants.

'Very well,' he continued, pursing his lips. 'Ask away.'

_What will the human response to our attacks on their town be?_

'They will attack you with atomic projectiles. Probably within days.' Most unusually, the Doctor felt a grim satisfaction in stating this fact. The Cadaverites didn't like this news, and fell to babbling amongst themselves telepathically.

_Then why did you come here alone to talk?_

'Because I am not human, as you already know. My intent was to seek an accomodation.'

The concept of "accomodation" seemed foreign to them; they clucked and hissed to one another in confusion. After settling the point the questions continued.

_What do the humans know about us? _

'More than you suspect. Centuries ago another subterranean colony of yours was uncovered, and your behaviour and appearance passed into legend.'

_Do they know if we have any weaknesses?_

'They do by now. Silver is your weakness, as I understand. The humans in Trevilho are arming themselves with silver weapons as we speak.'

Apparently his tone was too contemptuous; a knotty fist struck across the back of his head, pitching him forward.

_Do not gloat at the Great Ones! Animal!_

'I am not an animal,' retorted the Doctor. 'And if you are so superior, why were you stuck down here?'

Once again he suffered a blow to the head, though this time the dectet hissed angrily at the servant behind who struck him.

_You are alive only because you are useful to us. Refrain from insolence._

'My question still stands. Here you are, stuck underground, totally isolated. If you are as advanced as you claim, why are you here at all!'

The ten leaders stopped to hiss amongst themselves.

_You will be made to understand._

_You will attend to our history._

_You will learn the futility of resistance._

_We are the survivors of the Greater Will. The Karausians deemed it wise to refrain from procreation, to gradually and gracefully die out as natural causes extinguished our race. _We did not agree

_The Greater Will fought until utterly defeated. Still, the Karausians did not slaughter us. No. They transported us across space, fifty thousand naked prisoners taken hundreds of light years from home. We were transported into these artificial caverns by trans-mat, left to die of hunger and thirst and madness._

_We did not die! We prevailed! We still prevail!_

The arrogance, malice and glee in these declarations were tangible things, and a clue to how these creatures managed to survive for two thousand years in a barren and inhospitable environment: sheer force of will, a will at the edge of reason in it's intensity.

'There can't be more than a few hundred of you left,' commented the Doctor. 'You can't challenge the billions of this world.'

The dectet hissed and bobbed in a manner that sounded unpleasantly like laughter. The Time Lord decided that he found these creatures amongst the most repellent he had ever encountered.

_Our numbers increase all the time, not-human. _

_We number a thousand already._

_And for all your talk of silver weapons, the humans cannot stop us._

_Take him! Take him to see the converts! Let him understand that _we will prevail!

The rush of self-congratulatory gloating over, the escorts moved the Doctor away from the dectet and their entourage, out into the main cavern.

_Right, not-human_.

His eyes now adjusting to the darkness, the Doctor realised that while the cavern walls and ceiling were glowing with gentle phosphoresence, the floor did not. Nor did it possess the same rough finish of the wall, or what he could see of the walls; it must have been worn smooth by the passage of countless Cadaverite feet over centuries of imprisonment.

_Turn here, not-human_

The instruction led him into another vast chamber branching off from the main cavern, a chamber terraced and tiered from the narrow entranceway, with flights of steps carved into the rock, what might be considered an alien dormitory . Now, his mind primed by that thought, the Doctor saw hundreds of Cadaverites lying prone on the terraces, in attitudes of rest. Or was that right? Many were writhing and twisting, like fever victims. Dotted here and there were Cadaverites in ragged clothing, whilst others lay amongst the torn remnants of clothes.

'Replicative absorption!' realised the Doctor with a sudden start. These creatures were not alien prisoners resting from labour, they were humans undergoing the parasitical DNA metamorphosis into Cadaverites. That explained their repose and febrile convulsions.

His skin crawled in a compound of disgust and sympathy. Disgust for the vile process, which he had witnessed in other races and at other times, which entailed one being suffering complete disintegration both mental and physical, so that another entity could arise from the ashes. Sympathy for the human victims, who would soon cease to exist as their body chemistry was over-written and catalysed, leaving a collection of resources for the Cadaverite DNA to exploit.

By accident and surely not design he was able to look directly at one of the miserable victims of the Cadaverite process, a teenaged girl whose hair was falling out, whose fingernails were becoming longer and sharper than any human nails had a right to be, whose skin had lost the healthy melanin tint of a human and was instead taking on the pallor of a cave-dweller. She twisted in hopeless misery as her immune system gave up the struggle with the invading alien DNA.

I cannot let this happen, said the Time Lord to himself. Taking his captors by surprise, he vaulted up the giant terrace step, landing next to the wretched teenager. A quick jab of his fingers at her temple and she passed out – a process possibly also helped by his pressing the blade of Avtandil's knife to her neck. Sleight of hand made the knife vanish before his guards caught and threw him back to the lower level.

_Interfere if you wish, not-human. You cannot help them all._

_Look upon them! Cattle being converted to the Greater Will! You cannot doubt that we will prevail._

'I can hope, nevertheless,' replied the Doctor, estimating that there were approximately seven hundred humans here, most of whom were in the final stages of conversion. Indeed, one Cadaverite rose triumphantly to it's feet while he counted.

_Back to the prisoners, not-human_.

They weren't gentle about getting him back to the fissure with Masha and Anya, probably cross that he'd managed to interfere with the conversion process for one prisoner.

'Good god! You're alive!' exclaimed Anya when he was propelled with considerable force into the narrow prison, stumbling and almost falling.

'Yes, I am,' he replied. For the moment, he nearly added.

'Told you so. Anya, get the man some water,' scolded Masha. 'The only thing I can offer you – sorry, you didn't tell us you name.'

'The Doctor.'

'"Doctor"? Doctor what?' asked Anya.

'Just "The Doctor".'

'A comedian. Or, considering that you deliberately walked in here, a lunatic,' replied Masha crossly.

'I, madam, am neither. Now, I have learnt a great deal about our captors, but a little reflection will tell me even more. Can I have quiet whilst I think?'

Anya made a face. Masha seemed impressed at being called "madam".

'Go on, you silly goose, go and exercise the sleepers,' she ordered, then settled down to watch her fellow prisoner think.

The Doctor's thoughts were composed equally of what he did and did not know, what the Cadaverites told him and what they omitted.

They didn't even ask my name, he pondered. Here is Masha, a woman possibly about to die, and she still wants to know who I am. Not the Cadaverites! No, to them I'm just a not-human. If they tried to convert me and obtain my memories and intelligence that way, then I would die – a regeneration would be triggered, and they'd be back at the start again. If their colleague in the BTR communicated to them via telepathy before dying then they already know I cannot be controlled by mental power.

On the other hand, I am well-informed about political, military and social events above ground. Not to mention I possess the Tardis. Quite the catch!

Very well, now, what about my hosts. We can presume that this cavern did not house all fifty thousand prisoners, especially since at least one other cavern existed in the Black Forest region. Say twenty-five thousand prisoners. Of whom no more than five hundred were left until a few weeks ago.

It was the classic problem of a closed system. The fugitives were left here five hundred years ago, no water, no food, no light, nothing, nothing, nothing. Instead of becoming extinct, the Cadaverites actually prospered, witness the giant structures create within their prison.

How did they manage to survive? That was the big question. Given survival, then the Cadaverites could muster their mental powers and alter the environment to their tastes, over time. They could extract metals from the bare rock, creating those tools he had seen, tools that doubled as weapons. With tools they could dig for water. All of it hinged, critically, upon their surviving.

Survival. Survival above all else. The Greater Will prevailing, a force greater than those individuals who composed it.

Anya and Masha witnessed the tall, white-haired stranger snap his fingers, sit upright and say two words aloud: the first they recognised from science classes – "Eureka". The second they recognised from horror stories and grim tales of snow-bound pioneers – "cannibal".

'It all fits!' exclaimed the Doctor, assembling the pieces in his imagination.

Survival at any cost. Disregard ethics or morality, and the resources to sustain survival were obvious: other Cadaverites.

'They must have retained a core of leaders, an elite who were beyond the rules others lived or died by. The majority of the prisoners went into a state of self-induced trance, requiring minimal amounts of water, food or air to survive. The leaders formed a separate group. Most of them would also be in a trance state, only to be revived periodically _to feed on the living bodies of their comrades_!'

So the surviving leaders had spent the centuries extracting and refining metal ores, locating water from underground springs and streams, dining on their inert companions. Yet even this absolute amoral survival was insufficient. From twenty-five thousand their numbers had dwindled to five hundred, a fractional remnant.

None of this had been mentioned to him, or even hinted at , by the surviving Greater Will leaders. Not the sort of thing you wanted to publicise amongst your followers, really: yes you will live forever provided you eat Uncle Fred, or yes you will live forever except minus your arms and legs plus any other meatier parts of you that look succulent. No, that would never do.

'Truly, the criminally insane,' murmured the Doctor to himself. No wonder the Karausians stuck them here.

And that was another puzzle. The Karausians were indisputably a higher form of life, given that they were willing and able to die rather than continue to exist at the cost of other races. Why, then, did they burden Earth with tens of thousands of monstrous, amoral, near-indestructible killers?

'I said, Mister Doctor, what do we do now?' asked Masha, loudly, tugging on his coat sleeve.

'Eh? Oh, sorry, were you talking to me?'

'Yes! Those horrid little bobbing sentries have disappeared, for the moment at least before the next ones arrive, so we can talk. What do we do now?'

That decision at least didn't require much thought.

'We escape, my dear. We escape!'

Their sentries at the fissure's opening probably returned to the Dectet. Orders. The Doctor felt that his sustained usefulness to the Cadaverites was greatly lessened or finished entirely, now that they were aware nuclear weapons might be used against them. So escape became the only solution.

First things first – the group of entranced sleepers at the back of the fissure. Left here, they would ultimately provide the Cadaverites with food.

'Unacceptable,' muttered the Doctor to himself. Reaching around in his pocket, he came across the mirror device used to counter-hypnotise John. 'Excellent!' he told the cave walls. First of all he used the device on Masha and Anya for a few minutes, rendering them far less susceptible to the Cadaverites.

'Ladies, cover your eyes until further notice,' he announced, before moving to begin the recovery and rescue. He didn't want Masha or Anya struck still as stones before leaving.

One by one, with halts for people to recover their wits, or to cry, or hug one another, the Doctor released the captives from their mental chains. When all had been restored to consciousness, Masha and Anya warned them: be ready to run from the fissure, into the cavern and back to the mine tunnels.

The Doctor radiated confidence to the freed captives, even if he felt distinctly apprehensive. They needed to get up through the tunnels of the mine, outrunning any pursuit, and, if they managed that feat, would emerge into darkness. Sunset above meant that the Cadaverites laying seige to Trevilho could move about freely, not to mention their pursuers, who might even now be on their way. He walked quickly with the Russians to the breach in the cavern wall.

'Does anyone know the way out?' he asked quietly. An elderly gentleman, dusty and scratched, wearing a suit that had once been impressive, raised his hand. 'Good. You lead everybody. When you get to the first large worked-out gallery, I want you to take the emergency connecting tunnel across to the next one. Wait there for me.'

'What are you going to do!' asked Masha, in a frenzy of hope, worry, fear and concern. The Doctor tapped one side of his long nose.

'Don't worry, my dear. I shall be along shortly. Oh – please take this.' He passed over Avtandil's knife. 'Silver. Kills Cadaverites instantly.'

Before the huddled group began to move, he gave them a final warning; his counter-hypnosis would give them limited protection against Cadaverite mind-control, for a short time only. They must move silently and swiftly.

They did. Even the terrified children, a dozen of them, managed to be quiet and quick.

The patter of hasty footsteps died away, allowing the Doctor to examine the breach more closely. Yes, just as he hoped – pitted, rough, full of nooks and crannies a man might use to climb upward. No time to waste, he commended himself, and selected a hole for his foot.

Behind him came the shuffle of hasty footsteps. Masha come to check up on him, most likely, well she could give him a boost upwards –

_Interfering fool!_ came the silent Cadaverite rasp, and a chill white arm circled round his neck, stronger than a steel band, pulling him backwards, cutting off his breath. Black spots sprang into his vision while he struggled vainly against the appalling strength of the creature, hearing his bones creak in protest, smelling the pungent reek of a carnivore's breath in his nostrils.

Then the alien strength vanished, the encircling iron arm became a boneless jelly, the weight of the creature fell from him and he could breathe again, drawing in great, grateful lungfuls of air.

Turning to see exactly what occurred, the Doctor realised that the sentries must have been rotated, leaving a gap of a few minutes where he had seized the chance. One dead Cadaverite lay at his feet, face down, a knife in it's back. Masha stood over the body, looking a little pale, and pointing into the depths of the cavern. The second sentry stood motionless thirty metres distant, watching the two escapees, gnashing it's fangs and clashing it's talons.

'I just knew you were going to get into trouble,' murmured Masha. 'I just _knew_ it.'

The Doctor measured distance and speed. In the time required to bend and pull the silver knife free, the second Cadaverite would be upon them. He bent as if to pluck the knife from the body, then pulled his sonic screwdriver from a pocket and fired a three-second pulse at the leaping Cadaverite.

Which promptly exhibited all the symptoms of a scalded cat, leaping away from them, squalling in pain and clutching it's ears, to finally crumple on the cavern floor.

'Did you kill it?' asked Masha, retrieving the knife.

'No. No, I don't think so,' replied the Doctor thoughtfully.

'Pity.'

'Not a very charitable attitude! Now that you're here, give me a hand to climb up the hole in the wall here. Cup your hands. That's it, now – push!'

Masha stared at the stranger climbing up the ragged wall like a human spider, using holes and crevices she couldn't even see to ascend ever higher, for the saints only knew what end. When he stopped, the Doctor stretched out a hand to the jagged roof of the hole, and Masha felt her teeth throb and her head buzz, until she felt dizzy and sick. A loud crack sent echoes chasing themselves around the cavern walls, and she heard the clatter of falling dust and debris.

The Doctor dropped lightly to the floor, accompanied by another loud crack, and a faint rumble. Masha stood still, not alert to the danger, and he remembered she didn't know about the sonic screwdriver or what it could do.

'Time to leave,' he called, above another series of cracks. More debris came pattering down, drowning out the sound of approaching feet – alerted by their sentries, the Cadaverites were coming to investigate.

'What did you do!' asked Masha at a dead run, hearing crashes and bangs from behind her yet not daring to stop or even turn whilst running.

'Sonic screwdriver,' called the Doctor, jogging along calmly. 'Adjusted for sub-sonics. I found a flaw in the gallery ceiling and persuaded it to spread.'

A dull roar from the crudely-hewn gallery behind them preceded a gout of dust that played around their back and heels. Obviously the roof had collapsed entirely.

'Phew, can we stop now? I'm not made for running, Doctor.'

'We can slow down, but we can't stop, Masha. The Cadaverites behind us have been stopped by the roof falling in. However, if any are left in the mine above us then they might be heading down here to intercept the escapees. We need to be in that worked-out gallery before they find us.'

Masha slowed down still further.

'Give them an earful of your magic wand.'

The Doctor tutted.

'Masha, it doesn't have endless power! A few minutes use exhausts the power, and I hadn't fully recharged it before we left.'

By the time they tip-toed into the rendezvous, Masha had the beginnings of a world-class headache, brought on by the light levels. This didn't stop her from noticing and exclaiming in alarm; nobody else was present.

'_hsst_!' came a whisper from further into the chamber. Anya emerged from the emergency shaft, waving at them. She looked both relieved and grateful.

'Lord alive, how glad I am to see both of you! Valentin led us into here for safety, out of the way.'

'Valentin has the right idea, Anya,' said the Doctor. 'Pass the message on – move along the passage to the next chamber.'

Bringing up the rear, the Doctor repeated his trick of the cavern roof on the roof of the emergency shaft, being almost too successful and nearly burying himself in rubble. Beating dust from his shoulders, he emerged into the second chamber to a ring of concerned faces.

'Ah. Yes. A slight over-estimate there. Never mind, keep moving – along the emergency passage in the corner.'

The trick was repeated twice more before the group moved into the main tunnels. Bringing roofs down under tons of rubble would – hopefully – stall any pursuit. Any Cadaverites ahead of the escapees in the upper levels – well, deal with that problem when it came, decided the Doctor. Many of the Russians now had mining tools or improvised blunt instruments as weapons: defenceless no longer, nobody in the group looked prepared to give up without a struggle. Be that as it may, determination could only drive them so far for so long, as the escapees, not having eaten for days, and having been stood comatose for just as long, began to flag.

'Five minutes rest, Doctor,' pleaded the elderly man, Valentin. 'I cannot go on and the children are worn out.'

Reluctantly, the Doctor agreed to a five-minute break. Afterwards he chivvied the group onwards and upwards, always listening for pursuit, until the group came to a hairpin and their leaders stopped abruptly on the upslope.

'Keep moving!' hissed the Doctor, worrying over the delay. Several of the Russians gestured in alarm at the turn of the tunnel just ahead. Visible in light from the tunnel's cable-hung lamps were the bobbing shadows of Cadaverites, easily dozens of them, on the wall opposite. The shadows became smaller and more distinct, indicating that the creatures were coming down the inclined floor.

Without speaking the group closed up, with the children in the centre.

_Cattle! Come to us!_

_Obey. Return to your prison_

_Give us the non-human!_

_Throw down your weapons._

None of these commands worked, the net effect merely being that several of the children seemed stunned and uncertain. Masha brandished her knife.

'See how sharp my blade is, you miserable cotton-coloured rascals! Come near us and I'll skin you alive.'

Valentin struck his crowbar against the ground, sending up sparks.

'White devils. I will play hockey with your heads!'

Brave words, applauded the Doctor internally. Not that his rag-tag stood a chance against the alien killers, and he knew that they knew it.

The Cadaverites moved down and round the hair-pin bend slowly, with relish, hissing to each other. The Doctor counted thirty of them, all moving slowly, with an arrogance borne of near-invulnerability. They might be stopped or slowed by the sonic-screwdriver, in which case edging past them might be possible – worth a try.Unfortunately, the device's power-bar showed nearly exhausted when he pointed it at the Cadaverites, and they only cringed back for several seconds before the power gave out entirely. Their body language changed then, from arrogance to annoyance, that the human cattle had seen their masters humiliated.

**EIGHT**

A bass rumble, combining sound and vibration, made everything in the tunnel stop abruptly. Anxious eyes turned up towards the roof, checking for cracks or falling debris. All, without exception, human, Cadaverite and initially the Doctor, feared a tunnel collapse.

No! he realised. Too regular. An engine?

The rumbling grew and shook the tunnel walls, accompanied by the asthmatic growl of a diesel engine until an elderly Komsomolets caterpillar tractor, battered nearly paintless, lurched around the top of the hair-pin.

Simultaneously the Cadaverites began shrieking in pain, running blindly from the oncoming tractor, flailing blindly at the escapees, running anywhere – Valentin gave one a mighty blow from his steel truncheon; Masha, quick-witted enough to jump aside, slashed one creature in the arm as it flailed by. A shriek of pain later it collapsed, dead, at her feet.

How ingenious! The Doctor recognised an ultra-violet lamp riveted to the radiator grille of the tractor, glowing gently purple and the cause of the alien's distress.

A familiar very large shape jumped down from the cab, shouldering a rifle. A shatteringly loud bang echoed up and down the tunnel and a Cadaverite dropped instantly dead. The Doctor put out his hand and pushed down the muzzle of the AK47 before John could shoot any more of the retreating aliens.

'Needless killing,' he commented. 'They're quite harmless for the moment.'

'Need a lift, Doc?' asked John.

'You don't know how grateful I am to see you!' enthused the Doctor, releasing the officer's rifle.

'Who's this?' asked several Russians.

'Who are they?' asked John.

'How did you get up here?' asked the Doctor. 'Enough questions! Never mind, just keep moving. Everyone, just keep moving.'

At his suggestion, they abandoned the tractor in the tunnel with it's engine running. The baleful ultra-violet light on the engine front would keep any Cadaverites at a safe distance until the fuel ran out. Another breathing-space.

'We still have to get from mine to town, in the dark, avoiding any wandering vampires on the loose, with only one gun and from what you say a single knife between us. Have I missed anything or are matters even worse?' commented John, on hearing what had occurred in the cavern.

'You have it exactly. How many people can fit into that BTR vehicle?' replied his companion.

'Papa Doctor, can we rest?' asked a small girl, no more than ten years old, visibly exhausted by the flight from several levels below. More of the children were trailing, and would have been at the rear if the group didn't ensure they remained firmly in the middle.

'There's no time to stop,' replied John, surprising himself with how adept he was with small children. 'But I'll give you a piggy-back, Little Mistress - ?'

'Irina,' replied the girl, solemnly. John squatted down and Irina climbed on his broad back, clutching firmly around his neck.

'Make sure the children don't slow down. Do whatever you can to keep them moving,' called the Doctor. He felt heartened. The escapees were in the upper level of the mine, less than half a kilometre from the entrance, and still no more Cadaverites appeared. It was possible that John had driven them all before him with the UV-adapted tractor.

'Where did you get that ultra-violet lamp?' he asked, curious. Also, it might distract the escapees. One small child, of indeterminate gender, already held onto his hand with a desperate energy, looking up for reassurance. The Doctor gave one of his warm, paradoxically human smiles and the child responded with an equally sunny grin.

'A doctor in Trivelho, Czech fellow called Karel. He was recommending sun-lamp treatment for our good friend Zelinski, mentioning that the ultra-violet would do him good. Comrade Zelinski gladly gave up the UV lamp at the worker's sanitarium for the greater good of the Motherland.'

The Russians moved slower now, from caution rather than exhaustion. They passed a dead Cadaverite, shot by John on his journey down the mine in his clanking transport earlier that night. Irina tightened her arms around the officer's neck in a reflex action.

'I'm scared, mister. I'm scared of the monsters,' she complained, eyes screwed tightly shut. The small co-traveller hanging onto the Doctor's hand nodded silently, eyes wide at the awful sight they passed.

'Don't worry, we'll get back home safe and sound,' consoled the Doctor, sounding vastly more confident than he felt.

'Ha! Monsters beware!' snorted Masha, brandishing her silver knife. 'One touch from this blade and they die.' The Doctor's small companion looked suitably impressed at this, and a few of the adults managed to look amused.

'Well, Irina, you may be scared of monsters, but monsters are scared of _me_!' announced John, pausing to punch the tunnel wall. Bits of dust and rock flew amongst the escapees, causing a slight panic until they determined the walls were not falling inwards. 'I've killed dozens of them in my time,' he continued, nonchalantly and truthfully, referring to the Autons.

The Doctor nodded at the large officer, with Irina dangling from his back.

'See? We will get home.'

They emerged from the mine entrance into the dark, chill air of northern Russia, which still felt warm and welcoming compared to the environment they'd had to suffer.

A bleak, sterile light from flourescent bulbs in the quarry showed the derelict BTR a hundred metres away, rendered a sickly bilious colour in the sodium glare.

'Your chariot awaits,' deadpanned John, pointing the personnel carrier out to the Doctor.

'Most amusing. Does anyone here know how to drive a BTR? A young man in denims amongst the Russians stuck up a hand.

'Me, mister. I did my national service last year, including servicing and driving them things.'

'Good. You are the Driver.' And the way he pronounced it definitely made it "Driver" with a capital "D". 'When we get in that vehicle, your duty is to get us all to Trivelho, no matter what.' And once again there were capital letters in "No Matter What".

'Er, mister Doctor, only about a dozen people can get in one of them,' explained another young man, clearly a recent conscriptee who knew by practical example what the BTR could hold.

Ignoring him out of sheer necessity, the Time Lord began to shepherd the Russians across the mine apron, keeping his eyes on the buildings around them. Orange light cast by the lighting system, still sustained by the power plant, threw long dark shadows of infinite threat across the apron. The escapee's shadows flowed and danced erratically across the uneven ground en route to the big military vehicle.

'Children inside first,' called Valentin. The small escapees scurried over the roof and into the passenger compartment by dint of hauling themselves up via handles welded to the hull. Irina only let go of John when he promised to join her inside immediately.

Only after more adults packed into the interior did the presence of a dead, decaying Cadaverite under a sheath of coats come to light. Howls of protest later, the rotting corpse was thrown outside in a folded overcoat.

'Get onto the outside. Find a hand-hold and hold on with your hands, both of them, tight as you can,' ordered the young man in denim to the adults remaining.

'Twenty inside, twenty outside,' commented John, looking around for potential attackers.

Nobody. Cables fluttered and blew in the chilly night wind. Nothing else moved.

Valentin took a hand.

'You're the driver; you - mister Fur Hat, you sit next to him on the right. You, Big Man, you can sit on top of the hull with your gun.'

John, dubbed "Big Man" to his amusement, did indeed secure himself to the hull with a length of rope. More Russians joined him when the interior could no longer take any more people. Valentin took command of the gun turret, clacking handles and levers, checking ammunition belts, turning it through five degrees from the axial orientation.

'Don't waggle that thing while we're driving. If you move it across more than ninety degrees you'll start knocking us off,' warned John. The Doctor ignored them all, being crammed into the passenger compartment in front of the radio. His prime objective was communicating with the outside world, a feat not easily managed at the best of times in isolated north-west Russia, still less so under current circumstances.

'What is "waggle"?' asked Anya, stuck on the outside of the metal box with John. 'You Moscow folks talk damn funny.'

Masha waved the magic silver knife in front of them both.

'You, Big Man, you need to get this back to your friend the Doctor. I can't see any use for it here.'

John could. He had bumped and rumbled and slowly driven up the road from Trivelho to the mine in his 1950's artillery tow vehicle, seeing occasional Cadaverites loping over the fields roundabout, even over the road before him. The aliens fled before his ultra-violet headlight, apart from one that had turned on him inside the tunnel workings; a single silver bullet saw it off.

'Here, you need a lanyard around this,' he told them. 'See. A ring in the hilt, thus –' and he threw a knot and binding together ' – then a dangling cord. Prevents loss by dropping.'

A crescendo of roaring, whining and coughing suddenly burst into being below them as the engines of the BTR came to life after days of inactivity. Plumes of exhaust smoke shot into the night sky, angled to the body of the personnel carrier, being produced by the low-efficiency engines running on cheap Romanian diesel.

'Off and away!' chortled John, watched with apprehension by others clinging to all the metal handholds they could find.

Down below, barely able to move in the cramped interior, the Doctor looked in dismay at the radio. The fascia was split, a couple of dials were missing and when he dismounted the rear cover, broken vacuum tubes fell about.

'Smashed,' he said to those listening, simultaneously turning the problem over in his head. The radio had been intact when he finally dismounted it from the wall. The Cadaverites must have come into the vehicle and deliberately smashed it while he was in the mine. Why would they do that? Thanks to telepathy they would already have known of the radio from their single alien comrade trapped in the BTR, yet they didn't bother to destroy it at that time, a task that would have taken seconds.

'Something rotten in the state of Denmark,' he muttered to himself. 'Except for Denmark read Russia.'

Valentin shouted an unintelligible curse, then began firing the turret heavy machine gun. He was immediately cursed in his turn by everyone present, for making too much noise, scaring the children and spreading cordite fumes into the passenger compartment.

'I got one of them,' he called back, defiantly. 'Knocked it over.'

'Save your bullets,' said the Doctor. 'You can't hit a moving target except by luck, and Trivelho can use that weapon.'

Up on the roof the Russians and John felt the nip of cold night air, made sharper by the speed of their passage. The Driver didn't bother to steer to the right side of the road, instead staying on the middle, and he kept his headlights off. The only concession he made to the piggyback passengers was to stay at forty kilometres an hour, which they still felt was screamingly dangerous.

Remembering his promise to Irina, John stuck his head into the passenger compartment.

'Sorry, Princess, I can't fit in, I'm too fat. I'd squash you like a jelly!' and he squeezed his face flat between his palms, making the solemn girl smile.

'Look!' pointed Masha, at a loping white figure running up the road towards them. The Cadaverite paused in puzzlement when the BTR thundered into view, not knowing what to make of the vehicle or it's passengers atop and within. Valentin succumbed to temptation and loosed off a burst from the heavy machine gun, missing but forcing the creature to dart left. Unfortunately it chose the wrong side of the road at precisely the wrong moment, as Driver swerved to miss where it originally stood. Eleven tons of BTR struck the alien, knocking it howling across the road and off into slushy banks of snow piled up on the side.

'That may not kill it, but, my! It must have hurt,' commented a rooftop passenger, their words hard to make out in the whistling wind.

Hurt the alien may have been; dead it was not. They found this out the hard way when other Cadaverites began to converge on the BTR on it's short journey to the town, summoned telepathically by their injured companion.

'Holy mother! Here they come!' shouted one of the rooftop passengers in warning.

More slinking pale shapes came rushing up the road towards them, coming from the direction of Trivelho, apparently trying to intercept the escapees before they reached the town.

The first alien didn't try to be subtle or careful. It leapt directly at the BTR's cab, to be shot instantly by John, dying before it hit the hull, bounced off and fell to be crushed by the four nearside wheels.

_Cattle! Stop and climb down!_

_Cease firing!_

There were other mental commands, ineffective against John and the Doctor, yet beginning to affect the Russians. The BTR began to slow down.

Masha pressed the silver knife against her temple, seeming to draw strength from the blade.

'Keep driving! Don't slow down!' called the Doctor, summoning his own mental abilities and trying to project them, keeping the alien influence at bay. 'Fight their influence!'

John banged his rifle butt against the hull top.

'For the love of God don't slow down or we're all dead!'

Valentin recovered enough to fire both the machine guns in the turret, sending great glowing tracer balls zooming down the road, wobbling as the vehicle moved.

The bullets might not be able to kill the Cadaverites, judged the Doctor, but dodging them forced the alien hunters to break their concentration. His own abilities were outranged and overpowered by the combined alien effort when they mustered.

Another alien came at the BTR, from the side this time, leaping onto the mudguard and clutching at the roof. With a fury that frightened the Russians who witnessed it John wielded the iron bar Valentin brought out of the mine, smacking it down in a blurred arc against the creature's fingers. Horrid brittle snaps cracked from the aliens ruined hands and it fell wailing to the road.

'Any more for any more!' yelled the officer, following up with a barrage of Anglo-Saxon swearing that impressed his audience.

There _were_ more, Cadaverites who ran alongside the vehicle, slashing at the tyres with their knife-like talons, taking care to remain beyond the reach of the big human.

'Can't – can't you shoot them?' asked Masha, her thoughts not forming properly, flowing thickly in her mind like treacle as the aliens sought to cowe and control her. Behind her, Anya collapsed onto the hull roof, nearly sliding over the edge. Another escapee, less seriously affected, grabbed her by the shoulders and prevented the unconscious girl from falling.

'Short of bullets,' replied John, down to five silver rounds. He'd shot several Cadaverites en route to the mine and didn't want to run out of the effective ammunition before they reached Trevilho.

One of the huge tyres went with a bang, sending a shudder through the whole vehicle. Risking a fall, which would be fatal, John leaned outwards and shot a Cadaverite. The others scattered, leaving another of the tyres going flat; fortunately the BTR still had six intact ones. Nevertheless, their speed fell.

Ahead of them the road ran between wrecked buildings, and further ahead the glow of fires could be seen as the town's defenders fought on in their hopeless struggle.

A fist-sized stone, hurled with great force, came out of the night between the wrecked houses and struck John squarely in the chest. His response was more swearing and a bullet fired back where the flying rock came from. More stones and even planks of wood came soaring at the BTR, bouncing off the sides or the unlucky passengers. The driver revved the engines even more and dropped a gear, swerving slightly to spoil their attacker's aim. Even that threatened to dislodge people, and there were frantic yells at him to stop driving so erratically.

'Don't stop till you get into the town square,' called the Doctor. 'The lighting there will protect us from attack. And turn on your headlights to show we're not hostile.'

Swiftly, demolished and burnt houses gave way to intact ones, defended by the town's militia, who looked with amazement at the battered personnel carrier racing by them. One brave soul tried to stop it by standing in the road; he jumped aside with inches to go when he realised the BTR wasn't going to stop.

All eleven tons of the vehicle slammed into a lamp-post, breaking it off at the base with a rusty crack, and welcome light from surviving lamp-posts around the town square showed hundreds camped on the cobbles. The driver braked hastily, sending up spurts of rubber smoke from the five remaining tyres.

'Trivelho town square, all passengers disembark please,' said John, sticking his head into the passenger compartment and winking at Irina.

The Doctor came out last, feeling drained after trying to fend off the Cadaverite's mental attacks.

'Thank you,' he said quietly to the driver. The young man didn't reply, being diverted by the big military helicopter that sat on the cobbles nearer the town hall.

'What's that doing here? Are they evacuating?' he asked.

Unfamiliar, hard-faced soldiers wearing berets came striding towards the BTR and it's occupants.

'I think we're about to find out,' murmured the Doctor.

A few of the Russians camped out in the square came over to see who the new arrivals were, and within seconds discovered that they weren't new, or arrivals.

'This man rescued us,' explained Masha. 'Him too,' pointing at John. Word of mouth spread incredibly quickly and soon the BTR was the focus of eager families trying to discover missing loved ones.

'Nadya! _Anna!_' yelled Misha, the small man with a sub-machine gun who'd threatened John days before. Now he elbowed his way into the crowd and swept up one of the rescued children, wrapping one arm around a short plump woman with tears running down her red cheeks. Speechless, he pumped the Doctor's hand in gratitude.

The hard-faced soldiers pushed their silent way past the crowd to confront both John and the Doctor.

'I'm the Doctor, pleased to meet you,' began the Time Lord, extending a hand that remained unshaken. 'And this is my companion, Lieutenant Izvestilnyuk.'

None of this made any impression on the strangers.

'It's vital that these people are given medical checks and an injection of a broad-spectrum anti-biotic,' stated the doctor.

'Sergeant!' snapped one of the soldiers, wearing a large grey moustache. 'Get these people rounded up and take statements from them. Apart from these two.'

Mutterings of dissent could be heard from the crowd around the BTR. Clearly those in the town square hadn't finished finding out what had happened to these escapees and resented the soldier's interference. The sergeant whistled and more soldiers came running, separating out the escapees from others. Masha cocked his sub-machine gun, apparently ready to take on anyone threatening the Doctor, until the Time Lord shook his head in unmistakable disapproval.

Valentin came over, dragging himself away from a soldier.

'Get off me, you cretin!' he barked. 'Major Valentin Taraschenko, Twenty-Third Guards Armoured, Red Army, Retired,' he intoned at the moustachioed soldier. The soldier caught up and grabbed the elder man's upper arms. 'And you, sir, who are you?'

'Colonel Stefan, Special Service Detachment, Guards Airborne Brigade. Currently very active. Take him away, trooper, but don't damage him.' The tone was one of dry amusement, over a steely nature.

'Come along _sir_,' said the burly soldier, removing the still protesting man.

'You treat them with respect! They saved all our lives!' he called over his shoulder.

'Quite,' commented the Colonel, looking with intensity at the two travellers. Two more soldiers came up to stand guard. One saluted the officer.

'Sir, Sergeant Kotelnikov is taking statements from the civilians.'

'Good.' Another long pause whilst he stared at John and the Doctor. 'Now maybe we can get the truth from these conspirators. Take them over to the interrogation tent.'

Petrosian turned uneasily to check that the vampire still lay bound on the table. Yes, it did. Lately it had stopped trying to frighten or alarm him with mental messages, which meant checking to see that it remained alive or conscious.

Wretched creature. Zhadov kept hitting it's heels with a broom-handle, taking out his dislike of the thing. Petrosian, for his part, kept clear of it. Part of his mind told him that keeping a monster like this in a basement violated operational requirements, whilst he remembered Zelinski's stern command not to tell anyone.

Why would Moscow Centre decide to keep this creature from myth hidden in a dingy, not-very-secure provincial basement? Surely the science staff needed to examine it, find out what weaknesses it had, what made it tick? None of the interrogations he or Zhadov carried out revealed anything, apart from a mocking sense of humour.

In fact, where had Zelinski vanished to? The officer's behaviour got erratic at times. For example, five minutes ago he simply sat bolt upright and left, muttering about "got to go for a minute". Go where! They had a rota for getting food, drink and answering calls of nature and Zelinski wasn't on it yet.

Oho, what's this? wondered Petrosian. His wandering eye fell across the radio table. Zelinski's hasty departure was so hasty he hadn't taken the code book, which lay, enticingly, on the table. Not only that, Zelinski's own notebook, which he'd transcribed messages in, lay underneath the small black codebook.

Making sure that the door was locked, Petrosian went over and looked at the notebook. He might persuade himself that he was merely checking on his superior's strange behaviour when really it amounted to curiosity. The first page marked with a turned-down corner was where he looked first.

"Initial reports indicate mine security breached by offensive outbreak MVD reinforcement needed stop hostile activity not contained at mine security cordon around town needed soonest stop town citizens issued arms expediency end"

Straightforward enough. Next page had a new entry.

"Interrogation of intruder captured in Trevilho ineffective stop intruder unwilling to communicate stop physical methods ineffective stop drug treatment ineffective please advise end"

Nothing he didn't already know. The sodium pentothal Zelinski used might as well have been water.

Next page.

"qcweoh kqewrpwe pqowje c ow fophhje kncbe soppe pnwperi spd pmwer cerp puwerv gweouvw fope flels sotqr mcoeeys qpehe"

Petrosian blinked. What the hell?

'That must be the code,' he murmured to himself. Next page.

"ffffffffffffffffpppppppppppppppppperrrrrrrrrrrrrcmmmmmmmmmwerpodddddddddddddddddpmkpwerommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmwppppppprmmmmmmmmmmmmmsjkeeeeeeeeeeeeeoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllll"

This wasn't code. It seemed to be complete gibberish. What the hell had Zelinski been doing? The next page consisted of more nonsense, and the next page, and the next.

With a smooth click, the door closed behind Zelinski, making Petrosian whirl round in guilt and alarm.

'Seen enough?' asked his superior, with a sinister and quiet intonation.

'What are you sending nonsense to Moscow Centre for, you imbecile!' asked Petrosian, waving the notebook. With a start he realised Zelinski's service issue Tokarev was pointing at his stomach, with the addition of a silencer. The man smelt of cordite and scorched cloth.

'Why send nonsense? Why, because the Master commands it,' replied Zelinski, softly, reaching down to the table and ripping off the rags around the alien's head. Two glaring red eyes looked up at him.

Petrosian leapt for Zelinski.


	5. Chapter 5

**NINE**

Colonel Stefan was a hard man. He had seen action as a junior officer in Hungary, again in Czechoslovakia as a Spetznaz officer and in several unofficial "encounters" on the Sino-Soviet border. He was rated as "Politically Reliable", which had allowed him to travel abroad and see the non-Communist world.

None of which gave him the needed experience to cope with what he found in Trevilho. The pilot had called him up to look out of the cockpit when they approached the isolated town, a vista of flame and sudden flurries of sparks. The only area large and well-lit enough to land on was the town square, where hordes of people fled from the helicopter.

The paratroopers set up a tent, hammering pegs into the cobble's corners, and Stefan used that for his headquarters, with the radio behind a partition. Several of the cowering refugees in the square were brought in for questioning, which amounted to – in the Colonel's opinion – complete nonsense.

'Aliens? Monsters? _Vampires_?' he burst out, reading transcripts.

'The stories are consistent, sir,' commented Sergeant Vlassov, equally non-plussed.

'Get the mayor here. And that MVD officer, Kopensky. And the KGB station members.'

Only the mayor and Kopensky arrived, none of the KGB agents being discovered, with two more people in tow – the mine's engineer and a driller. They confirmed the previous stories, which only annoyed the colonel even more. A conspiracy!

'Do you have any proof of these – these frankly insane allegations?' he asked the quartet.

No. They did not. No prisoners, no bodies, nothing except wild stories.

Then, to make matters more complex, a dangerously-driven BTR came skidding into the square, containing and carrying people who had supposedly been taken prisoner at the mine. Two of the escapees were strangers who claimed to come from Moscow Centre, or the GRU.

Those two strangers now sat, handcuffed to folding chairs, under the hostile gaze of the colonel. He _would_ find out the truth! The only action Colonel Stefan took that consoled the Doctor was sending the mine escapees over to the makeshift medical room in the town hall.

The Doctor felt guilt at managing to get John into such a pickle. He recognised the Colonel as a man with influence and information at his fingertips, one who couldn't be blustered or flustered into accepting the travellers stories.

'We'll deal with who and what you are later. Currently, my brief comes from the Politburo itself. Find out what is happening here. A simple request. And what do I hear in return? Utter nonsense! You could fertilise the fields with the answers I'm getting!'

In a simple gesture that contained unspoken menace, he indicated a small table, covered with a green surgical cloth, upon which lay a metal bowl containing several syringes.

'If you two start to talk fairy-tales, I promise you an especially hard interrogation. Now. What has been going on here?'

The Doctor sighed.

'Really, you wouldn't believe me if I told you.'

'Oh no? No harder to believe than _oupirs_ and white devils.'

'Look at the BTR,' interrupted John. 'It wasn't mountain mist doing the damage.'

'Then what was it!'

'Alien prisoners held captive for five hundred years until mining operations released them,' stated the Doctor flatly.

'They've been attacking the town at night,' added John helpfully.

'Indeed. That would explain the sudden lack-of-attack when I arrive, would it? They're so scared of the Guards Airborne?'

The two travellers suddenly became aware of an aural absence – no sounds of battle tonight.

'Have they given up?' asked John, looking at the Doctor. Sergeant Vlassov smacked the back of John's head.

'No talking to each other,' he growled.

Colonel Stefan shrugged. Alright, they wanted to play silly games. Let the gloves come off. The white-haired one, who called himself the Doctor, got a full syringe. The big man, pretty obviously a soldier, got another syringe.

Ten minutes later, they were both repeating the same story. The ex-soldier could barely focus and slurred badly, but the Doctor seemed bored. Privately and worriedly the colonel doubted if the mysterious stranger noticed any effects from the drugs.

'John, are you alright? Can you hear me?' asked the Doctor, concerned at John's reaction to the so-called truth drug. The dosage had been dangerously high, sufficient for even himself to feel a slight effect.

'Shuttup. No talking to each other,' growled Sergeant Vlassov again, moving behind the Doctor to deliver a slap.

The blow never fell. Instead they all heard a loud "pop" from outside, a small hole appeared in the rear of the tent and Sergeant Vlassov fell clumsily over the Doctor from behind, overturning the chair and spilling the Time Lord on the ground. Another two "pops" sounded, adding more holes in the tent wall.

Colonel Stefan knew that sound well – a silenced pistol.

'Sentry!' he yelled, ducking low and drawing his own pistol, just as a terrific bang sounded in the next partition and the tent walls bulged outwards and inwards under the force of an explosion.

Slowly, carefully, the Doctor pushed himself away from the cold stone cobbles, taking an inventory of how he felt. The handcuffs, cheaply-made chrome steel, had fractured under the force of the blast and left him free to move.

There had been an explosion, after the unfortunate non-com fell dead over him, he remembered.

Well, here he was still alive, if somewhat stunned and with his ears giving off a contant ringing tone, like a faulty telephone. To his left lay John, stretched prone but groaning healthily – at least to judge from the movement of his lips. The body of Sergeant Vlassov had fallen over the Doctor, partially shielding him from the blast and shrapnel. Sadly, not knowing the man's name, the Time Lord pushed the body free.

Another man lay stretched on the cobbles ahead of him – Colonel Stefan.

John first: pulse strong, good pupillary response, no bones broken. Part of the officer's problem was the unidentified drug used for the interrogation – that would work it's way out of his system gradually.

Colonel Stefan was out cold, a nasty bruise on one temple where he'd hit the cobbles hard. The Doctor pulled him into a classic recovery position, also taking care to acquire the officer's pistol.

Seconds later other paratroopers raced into the tent, checking for the hidden assassin, only then paying attention to the victims. From overhearing their unguarded chatter, the Doctor ascertained that the radio operator was dead, and his radio smashed.

'I'm quite alright, thank you,' he told them with some ascerbity, his hearing back to normal. 'Your Colonel is unconcious. Don't move him un-necessarily.'

Of course they ignored that advice, hefting the inert officer away to a campbed, throwing water on his face until he spluttered awake.

'What! Am I a garden plant?' he coughed angrily, jerking off the bed. 'Enough water.' He took a step towards the Doctor and wobbled uncertainly on his feet. 'One thousand curses! What the hell happened!'

'A grenade, sir,' explained a nervous non-com. 'Killed Corporal Streckvic, wrecked the radio.'

The Doctor watched anxiously as the colonel rubbed his bruise, wincing.

'Aren't you missing something, Colonel?' he asked, calmly. The Russian glared at him, a high-wattage glare that would have served to fry eggs. 'Here. I picked it up whilst checking your pulse,' and he proffered the Tokarev. Stefan snatched it, checked the magazine, racked the slide, checked the safety and called over the nervous non-com.

'See this?' he asked, waving the pistol under the soldier's nose.

'Yessir,' replied the soldier, blinking.

Stefan gestured at the Doctor.

'So did he, and a bloody sight quicker than you, you elephant's arse! Get out of my sight.'

The soldier left, speedily.

More paratroopers were milling around, searching for the mystery killer. Stefan kept a wary eye on the Doctor, taking reports from his handful of men, before dismissing them and walking slowly and carefully to the ex-captive.

'You could have killed me,' he announced. The Doctor nodded. 'Or escaped.' Another nod. 'Yet you chose to stay here. Okay. You are not who you claim to be, that much is obvious. However, nor do you seem to be hostile to the Soviet Union or it's citizens. I cannot make you out.'

The Doctor looked hard at the officer, who stared at the cobbles for long seconds.

'Who would try to kill you, that's my first question. The second question is who would want to destroy our radio. Any suggestions?'

'Your radio!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'The explosion destroyed your radio?' Stefan gave a puzzled nod, not understanding the excited response.

'I went up to the mine, Colonel, only partly out of concern for prisoners. The big personnel carrier had a radio in it, which we needed. There was no other way to communicate with the outside world once the Cadaverites destroyed Trivelho's telephone system.'

The Colonel looked interested, cocking his head to one side and ferreting in a pocket for cigarettes.

'Go on, go on.'

'I found the radio and it was intact before I entered the mine. By the time we left again it had been smashed. Deliberately, by the Cadaverites. Now, why do they do that?'

'Isolation,' replied the officer, lighting up his cigarette. 'Cut off all communication and you isolate the target group.' He puffed away for several seconds. 'Never been in the target group before, though.'

'We can't drive out of town?' asked the Doctor.

Stefan laughed a short, barking laugh.

'Not likely! The MVD and Red Army are under orders to shoot to kill without warning. The Kremlin thinks an outbreak of some hideous disease that turns people into homicidal maniacs has taken hold here.'

Not too far from the truth, said the Doctor to himself.

'And why kill _you_?' asked the colonel, coolly turning the situation around.

A harder question to answer.

'Simple revenge. I got those people out of the mine, along with John. They didn't like that.'

Colonel Stefan sat down next to the mysterious stranger and finished his cigarette, thinking. Comrade Poskrebyshchev brought the information straight from Comrade Kosygin; do not trust local organs of state security or administration, they may be compromised, in fact we do not feel able to trust any of the local agencies; maintain as complete a divorce from them as you can. Here was a stranger, without any paperwork, who knew more about the disaster than any local, yet who hadn't been here until two days ago.

'You're not local, are you?' he asked.

'Eh? Local?' replied the Doctor, a little nonplussed. 'No. Not at all, not in any way even _near_ local.'

'Good. Listen, then. As you know, you were the target of a gunman. My soldiers can't identify the killer. He hid amongst the people crowded into the square outside, fired off his shots from a silenced pistol to prevent being located and rolled a grenade at the tent wall. Luckily for all of us the fabric has an inner lining of woven steel fibres. Once the grenade went off the mystery killer used the crowd's panic to escape.'

All of this gave the Doctor pause for thought. Indeed, who might want him dead?

This train of thought suffered an interruption, in the shape of an earnest soldier.

'Sir! We have one of the KGB unit members!'

'Whoopee,' came a slurred comment from John. 'Wave some flags.'

The KGB member in question turned out to be Zhadov, a very annoyed and dirty Zhadov. His shaven head practically glowed under the illumination of the town square lights, his personal folding-stock AK47 was held by a paratrooper.

'And you are?' asked the colonel, standing up and holding his cigarette like a baton.

'Captain Osip Zhadov, Komitet Gosudarstvenoi Bezopasnosti,' came the crisp reply. 'Detained whilst sweeping Trevilho outskirts for enemy activity. '

"Sweeping" turned out to be an euphimism for trawling town limits for either wreckage or survivors.

'You are guilty of conspiracy and looting,' declared Colonel Stefan. 'Not to mention attempted murder, murder, assault, theft of livestock, crossing state boundaries without an internal passport and behaving in a manner unbecoming to the organs of state security.'

To the Doctor's interest, Zhadov didn't crumple at these allegations, nor did he become less angry or even try to get on better terms with the Colonel. In fact he came out with a string of curses that made interesting listening.

'What do you think you're doing, arresting a KGB officer!' he ended. 'Livestock?' came a few seconds later.

'I am here at the request of the very highest political levels, Captain Zhadov. KGB Headquarters cannot make out any sense of what you idiots have been transmitting to them, so a man on the spot was needed. Me.'

The bald man frowned, crinkling his brow and the top of his head.

'Don't blame me, Zelinski has been doing all the communicating with you people. He made damn sure of that. Those monsters are pretty hard to credit, yes, I grant you that.'

The colonel's moustache twitched with restrained annoyance.

'What bloody monsters! That's half the reason I'm here – silly nonsense taken to extremes.'

Zhadov frowned even more deeply, corrugating his pate.

'Er – then Moscow Centre hasn't been telling us to keep it secret? That's what Major Zelinski told us.'

The colonel glared again.

'Comrade Zhadov, Major Zelinksi's last radio message consisted of the figure one transmitted two-hundred and eighty seven times! He is of unsound mind and cannot be relied upon. Which is why I am here!' said the colonel, the last sentence in a near-shout.

'Ah. Then he didn't tell you about it,' said Zhadov. 'The captive. The monster we have in the basement,' he added hurriedly, seeing the other man's face begin to purple. The interesting hue on Stefan's face disappeared instantly he heard what the KGB officer said. Eyes could be seen swivelling amongst the soldier's of Stefan's paratroop contingent.

'Isn't that a Hammer film?' slurred John. The Doctor didn't know if the officer was being insulting or hallucinating. Regardless of that, he was shocked at the cavalier disregard of these Russians in keeping a live Cadaverite in the town hall.

'Good grief, man, are you serious! A live alien? Don't you know how appallingly dangerous these creatures are?'

The colonel looked similarly incredulous.

'Saints preserve us from idiots,' he seethed. 'Captain, do you really think that Moscow Centre would give orders to keep a hostile, alien, monstrous creature locked up in a provincial cellar? Do you really think that Dzerzhinsky Street is – is – is so stupid? They would snatch it from your hands!'

'No they wouldn't,' said Zhadov sulkily. 'They're nasty vicious things, these _oupirs_. It bit Zelinski.'

Colonel Stefan threw his head back and gritted his teeth in justified rage at the obstruction just uncovered.

The Doctor felt his jaw sag. They had allowed the Cadaverite to bite Zelinski – and now he knew who wanted him dead.

'Ah – Comrade Zhadov,' he began. 'Did your senior get the bite attended to? Treated with anti-biotics?'

Zhadov shook his head.

'It was only a nip. Look, I know what you're thinking, that maybe it took over our minds. No way – the patrol who blew it up also poked it's eyes out with bayonets. No mind powers without big red eyes.'

Patiently, the Doctor carried on.

'If the Cadaverite bit him, it transferred a quantity of genetic material into the bloodstream of your senior. Not enough to cause a transformation, not enough for replicative absorption, yet still enough to control his mind.'

Both Zhadov and Stefan looked at him with extreme intensity.

'Took over -,' said Zhadov, stopping and thinking. The messages to Moscow Centre consisting of gibberish were sent with him or Petrosian in the room, reassuring them that messages were being sent. Except that all of Zelinski's careful writing down of information, checking in his codebook, the relevant code alterations, the key transmissions, all of that was a masquerade. Intended to deceive himself and Petrosian.

'Then we have a rogue KGB officer on the loose,' reasoned Colonel Stefan. Putting the facts together he reached the same conclusion as the Doctor. 'Who just tried to kill you. And who killed Corporal Streckvic and Sergeant Vlasssov.'

The Doctor nodded. Who else, after all, had access to silenced pistols and grenades? Who else might be acting on orders to kill the Time Lord, who knew entirely too much about Karausians and Cadaverites for the latter's comfort?

'What a nest of poison toads!' said Stefan, punching a fist into his palm. He called over a paratrooper and pointed at Zhadov, glancing at John.

'He comes with us to find this captive monster. So does the Doctor.'

'Can I ride on the pony?' asked John, drooling.

'Make sure he doesn't foul himself,' sighed Stefan, tutting and shaking his head. With three paratroopers alongside, they headed across the cobbles and through the crowd of nervous civilians towards the town hall.

'I take it you believe our story,' asked the Doctor, trying to keep up with Stefan's rapid pace. 'Or at the very least don't disbelieve it.'

The colonel went up the town hall steps at a dead run.

'I, Doctor, am an empiricist. What I can see and touch and taste – that's what I believe in. If you can show me your monster I'll be convinced.'

He stopped at the town hall entrance, speaking to the civilian sentries and displaying a photostated identity badge.

'Colonel Stefan, Guards Airborne. Major Zelinski has gone insane and killed one of my men. He is to be shot on sight.'

Neither of the two civilians bothered to question this order. The Doctor judged that Major Zelinski had made himself somewhat unloved in Trevilho over the years, sufficiently to mean his life was in the balance.

Once in the foyer, Stefan stopped and instructed people; he was in charge now, nobody else, Zelinski the traitor needed to be killed on sight, carry on. Three passing civilians and an MVD non-com were told to circulate and pass on the message.

'Colonel, if we want to know what these aliens know, we need Zelinski alive,' tried the Doctor, with little hope of succeeding.

The colonel paid more attention to Zhadov's back, leading the way to a door under one of the marbled stairways.

'Hey, Doctor, if you take him alive, good for you. Otherwise the incestuous whoreson is dead already.' Stefan recalled Corporal Streckvic, loyal and capable, flattening a huge Czech airforce mechanic armed with a giant metal spanner before he could hit the Major a second time –

The poorly-made door groaned loudly when they dragged it open, creaking on it's hinges. Stefan gave it a look that might have warped the very planks.

A feeble glow from a low-wattage bulb indicated rather than lit the way below them, on steep and wobbly wooden steps.

'Take care, the floor is uneven,' warned Zhadov. More bulbs, unequal to the task of illumination, hindered their way along the corridor. An earthy smell pervaded the corridor, signalling that the earth beneath their feet was literally earth beneath their feet.

'Quality Soviet workmanship,' muttered the Doctor, drawing a venemous glance from Colonel Stefan.

Zhadov waved a hand for silence. He made a hand gesture and pointed to a basement door narrowly ajar, brighter light from the interior spilling into the corridor in a lemon-yellow wedge. Two of the paratroopers took up positions on either side of the door, while the third kicked it open after listening intently at the jamb for seconds.

The Doctor followed the nervous soldiers into the room, recognising a radio – smashed apart and useless – and a huge mahogany table. An empty table. Wires plaited together dangled from the legs onto the basement floor.

A chorus of bitter curses came from Zhadov, who slapped his face, then punched the wall, startling the paratroopers. The cause of his pain and anger was hidden from the Doctor to begin with, until he edged around the table.

Another of the KGB officers, the Armenian – Petrosian, wasn't it? – lay dead on the floor, bullet holes across his chest. A look of implacable anger frozen on his face, the dead man's hands were clutched tightly, the nails full of scratched skin and blood.

The swearing that Zhadov let loose made his curses in the interrogation tent seem mild and uninventive.

'This blood is uncongealed,' declared the Doctor quietly, having a forensic inspection. 'Under the nails. See? We missed this by minutes.'

'Sir, these wires were cut. And here's the pliers that did it,' announced one of the soldiers, discovering a pair of pliers under the table.

So. The Doctor laid his thoughts and discoveries out in a blanket, seeking a pattern. Petrosian dead, killed by gunfire, not by alien tooth and claw; alien released by wire-cutting; radio smashed; no sign of Zelinski.

'I can guess what happened here,' he told Stefan, who looked faintly lost. No alien, no evidence, but a body and proof of murder. 'Petrosian discovers that Zelinski is being controlled by the alien, perhaps a discovery linked to the attack on us in the square. There is a confrontation. Petrosian is killed, but not before inflicting injuries on Zelinski, who then frees the alien captive on it's orders. Now, I speculate that the alien knows what Zelinski knows – that we have silver ammunition capable of killing it – and is not keen on a showdown with Colonel Stefan and his paratroopers.'

They left the basement room in a sombre mood, searching the other empty rooms that opened off the corridor, finding an ancient printing press in one room, a faded collection of parade banners in another. No alien in the basement. Back upstairs they went.

'It won't head for the town square,' declared the Doctor. 'The lights there will incapacitate or perhaps kill it.'

'The rear of the town hall, then,' replied Zhadov, as they emerged through the squeaking, creaking door again.

'No, I don't think so,' said the Doctor, pointing to the huge glass windows in the hall's atrium. A subtle pink flush in the sky heralded the dawn. 'The creature is stuck in here, with us.'

Silent until now, Colonel Stefan glanced around the atrium, seeing workers and MVD soldiers resting or sleeping. On his orders, the paratroopers went around the hall and rudely woke people, getting them to pair off in groups of four, giving each group a floor or suite of rooms to search. Not a small job; the town hall had three floors, each with dozens of rooms of varying sizes.

'We will search the building for Major Zelinski and a captive alien creature, both of whom are to be shot on sight. No warnings, no woundings, just immediate execution. Any questions no good, get to work.'

The Doctor stayed in the hall with Colonel Stefan. Privately he considered this search to be a serious mistake, putting more lives at risk. Nobody would pay any attention to him, not while the Colonel remained to glower at the hapless makeshift militia. Yet he might still be able to help if or when they tracked the Cadaverite down.

John watched the Doctor depart through slitted eyes. His gibberish had been put on for the benefit of the Russians; although his head felt as if a herd of horses had spent hours stamping on it, his thoughts were lucid.

Quite what he hoped to achieve by pretending to be chemically-stunned even he wasn't sure. Perhaps it was only his way of thumbing his nose at them. Thank the Lord Above that hatchet-faced Colonel hadn't gone about asking who "Big John" really was. "An officer from the British Army seconded to UNIT" would have gone down like the proverbial lead balloon.

Dimly, and belatedly, John became aware of a commotion in the square outside the tent. A woman's voice, shrill and angry, could be heard arguing with the paratrooper guarding the tent.

The next he knew, a firm and gentle touch lay upon his brow, accompanied by a stern tutting and a ceaseless flow of chatter.

'Idiots, to do such a thing, idiots, not thinking, using such strong drugs on a man unused to them, who helped get us out of the caves, and if the Doctor is hurt I shall never forgive myself, no, for not pushing past those wretched fur-hatted fools with guns, may ten thousand lice dance in their armpits – oh!'

For John had opened his eyes wide, recognising the voice of Masha.

'Hello there, fair lady,' he half-joked.

'Shh!' she hissed, quietly 'They think you're dead to the world, that's how I got in here.' 'Oh dear, still unconscious,' she added in a stage whisper. 'I came to try and help your companion, the Doctor. His life is in danger,' she continued near-silently.

'Trust me, we know that already,' replied John drily, remembering the explosion and the bullets before that. 'Ow!' he winced, as Masha twisted his earlobe sharply.

'Not before, not just now, you slug-witted booby! In the next five minutes. He faces death in the next five minutes, and you have to help him challenge it.'

Her voice carried absolute conviction.

'How do you know?' asked John, wanting to understand. The Russian woman stopped abruptly for a second, looking beyond John, beyond the tent, beyond the present.

'I – I just _know_. I just know. Ever since being in the tunnel, since then – I seem to see what will happen. Don't look at me like that!'

'Okay,' said John, suddenly jumping upright with the force and conviction of a man possessed, pulling his arms at right-angles from the folding chair, with such force that the handcuff links split apart in a welter of blood and metal. 'Okay.'

The paratrooper on guard darted back into the tent when he heard the metallic clang of rending metal. His progress out of the tent, propelled by John's mighty right uppercut, was equally swift.

'Very well, Masha. The Doctor is in peril, so we are going to ride to the rescue!' Not so hastily that he didn't steal the sentry's AK47 and a spade from the BTR.

**TEN**

How do Russians like the colour red, mused the Doctor, stuck in the Town hall lobby with Colonel Stefan, observing the socialist décor.

A very weary Evgeny Klimentov spotted the Doctor and came over, casting unwelcome glances at the colonel.

'Doctor Kuznetz. You have noticed that the monsters didn't attack in strength last night? Only a few score, who rapidly disappeared when we started to kill them with silver ammunition.' The exhausted engineer rubbed his eyes, partially disbelieving his own survival. 'Another day of reprieve, thanks to you. Good day, Comrade Colonel,' he finished, coldly, going off for a sleep.

A set of possibilities, probabilities and perhapses suddenly locked into place in the Doctor's mind.

'Colonel! Colonel, I've just realised why the Cadaverites kept destroying any radio they came across,' he called, insistency in his voice. Colonel Stefan, not betraying any of the emotion he felt, looked over at the Doctor.

'Really. Keep your revelations to yourself for the moment, until we track down and kill this monster.'

To himself, and reluctantly, the colonel admitted that, insane though it might sound, a killer alien monster loose in the town hall actually made sense at the moment. Momentarily he wished himself matching wits and bullets against the canny Magyar opposition of Budapest a dozen years ago; at least they were human. At which thought he looked at Doctor Kuznetz, who knew far too much about alien monsters for comfort, and who shrugged off truth-drugs like water, and who didn't seem human either, except in a positive way.

Enough! swore the colonel at himself. Enough, enough. That way lay counter-revolutionary madness.

Teams phoned back to the lobby: no alien, no Zelinski. Nothing in the basement, nothing on the ground floor, nothing on the first floor, nothing on the second floor.

Third floor?

No, not on the third floor either. The damn thing and Zelinski had gone to ground, hiding in the town hall.

'All searchers stay on their floor. I will send troops to look more closely.' The pair of paratroopers left in the hallway got sent down to the basement.

The Doctor checked his sonic screwdriver; fully recharged.

'Colonel, I want to go searching for this creature.'

'Armed with – what? A dentist's drill? You are going to extract it into submission!' sneered the officer. Wordlessly, the Doctor pointed the device and pressed the on button, and the colonel found his gums throbbing, his ears aching and his stomach clenching.

'Non-lethal infrasonics,' said the Doctor. 'At a higher frequency they will incapacitate or even kill the Cadaverite. And where we find the creature we find Zelinski.'

'Whom you want to take alive, eh? Get on with you!' snapped the officer, seeing through the other man's deceit. 'If we get to him first you can dig his grave.'

The Doctor didn't bother to deny his hope of taking the rogue agent alive. Instead he calmly reasoned where the two fugitives might be hiding. Not in the basement – a few empty rooms and the boiler-room, with nowhere to conceal a person. The ground floor included the atrium, the huge hallway and two impressive marbled staircases, all reducing the space available for hiding places. First floor first, then.

Under a series of huge paintings in the approved Social Realist style – Hero Workers Over-achieve Girder Production, Donbas Project is Completed Early, Peasants on the Collective Farm – the Doctor cautiously opened doors on a series of small rooms, sweeping the sonic device into them with no results. Next was a larger function room, mahogany chairs ranked around the walls to make way for the temporary medical centre set up there. Trestle beds, portable canvas screens and a portable X-ray machine took up the centre of the room, with a doctor and nurse attending to half a dozen of the mine escapees. The Doctor felt a sense of relief that they were being looked after, and gave them a reassuring nod when faces turned to look at him questioningly.

'Just testing,' he announced, sweeping the sonic screwdriver over the room. Three people swathed in bandages occupied the trestle beds; one with both legs wrapped, another with both arms wrapped and one with his entire head covered by the material, leaving only space for his eyes.

This last person jmuped upright in alarm and surprise when the sonic beam swept over him.

'Curious,' said the Doctor, puzzled for a second. The high-frequency beam fell beyond the range of human hearing. Unless, of course, that person's preceptions were skewed by being under the influence of alien DNA.

Suddenly there was a silenced automatic pistol in the man's hand.

'Zelinski!' shouted a voice, and the Doctor felt himself knocked sideways by a person tackling him. Someone large rushed past the prone Doctor, and he recognised John, wielding a – shovel?

'The tricky bit was getting past that hatchet-faced colonel,' explained John. 'So I hid my face behind the spade, and Masha leant on my arm.'

'I knew you were in trouble, and that awful man would try to kill you,' said Masha, hesitantly.

The Doctor pursed his lips and weighed the spade in his hand. Colonel Stefan could be heard approaching.

'I used the flat, not the edge, Doctor.'

'A good job too,' commented Masha, noting the large and bloody dent in the spade. 'If you used the edge you'd have cut him in two.'

Colonel Stefan and two paratroopers leapt into the room, weapons drawn.

John had already stripped the bandages from Zelinski's face and used them to tie his wrists together behind his back.

'You! What are you doing here!' barked the officer in disbelief. Seeing the unconscious Zelinski, he moved his mouth but no sounds came out.

'Doctor, would you mind applying a bandage or two?' asked John of Doctor Pavel, holding up his forearms, cut and bleeding where the handcuffs bit into the skin.

'Ah – yes. Ah – of course,' said the bewildered and frankly scared doctor.

'And see to that traitor,' snapped Stefan, checking the rest of the room suspiciously, finding no clue to the Cadaverite's whereabouts.

'Can he talk?' he asked Pavel, indicating Zelinski with an unwavering gun muzzle.

'No. Not now, with a fractured skull and concussion at the very least. He'd be dead if the bandages hadn't cushioned the blow.'

'You said we'd find the monster with him, this mythical horror I still haven't seen –' began Stefan's harangue, cut off short when he realised the Doctor not only wasn't paying attention but was more interested in Zelinski's hands.

'Very interesting,' commented the Doctor, taking one limp hand and inspecting the palm. He repeated this process with the other hand. Stefan controlled his impulse to arrest and execute this meddler on the spot; the stranger knew more than he admitted, a lot more. Sooner or later he'd tell what he knew.

'What's so interesting?' asked John, puzzled.

'Look at his brow,' instructed the Time Lord. 'Sweaty. His palms are sweaty, where they aren't burnt or cut. His clothes are damp with sweat.' Pavel appeared with a thermometer.

'His temperature is too high,' said the nervous Czech. 'With no reason. No fever, the surroundings are not hot, he should not be so hot. And look at this,' he finished, showing Zelinski's wrist, which displayed a puncture wound. The skin around had gone dead white, the colour of cooked chicken.

'He needs a good dose of anti-biotics,' recommended the Doctor. 'For the moment, however, he is morphologically attuned to the Cadaverite which inflicted that injury.'

Nobody understood.

'What he feels, it will feel, and vice-versa.'

Masha sniggered.

'Then it must have a terrible headache! Poor thing, eh?'

The Doctor nodded in wry amusement.

'Yes, quite. And since he feels hot, so must our unpleasant alien visitor.'

All eyes and thoughts turned to the boiler-room.

'There was nothing down there,' said one of the paratroopers. 'It's an empty room.'

In answer the Doctor pointed to Zelinski's hands, scratched by recent sharp objects, burnt by the same objects.

'These injuries were suffered in dealing with metal laminates, presumably during the alien's escape.'

None of the paratroopers remained to hear what else the Doctor had to say, heading off at a trot.

'Really! I wish these people would stop to pay attention to what I tell them!' finished the Doctor, crossly. 'That creature may well kill them all. Come on, you two, we have an alien to catch and a few stupid soldiers to save.'

He ran after Colonel Stefan and his two soldiers, John and Masha following him in turn, down the marbled staircase, where onlookers stared at them in puzzlement and suspicion, through the squeaking basement door and down the steep steps beyond, risking a fall in the feeble light.

Access to the boiler room was via a large metalled door at the very end of the corridor, now ajar. Wary of running into a trap or crossfire, the threesome slowed and peered into the room beyond.

The boiler-room was not well-lit, and tangles of narrow-bore piping gave it the appearance of a symmetrical jungle. A massive red cuboidal object in the room's middle was the boiler itself, with a furnace glowing ruddily at one end. Big pipes carried hot water from the boiler for the building's heating system, and dials and meters were stuck at various portions of the engine's anatomy. Colonel Stefan and his two soldiers were pointing their weapons at man-high, dirty metal bins lined up against the far wall.

'Coal bins,' hissed Masha in a whisper. 'Locked shut to stop people stealing the coal.'

Yes, and Zelinski wouldn't have the keys, so the fugitive isn't going to be in there, reckoned the Doctor in half a second. Nor would the bins be hot inside.

'That creature is hiding close to the boiler or furnace,' he told them. He cleared his throat, theatrically, before entering the room. Unsurprisingly he discovered three guns pointed at him.

'Over there,' he indicated with a forefinger, keeping his hands (and eyebrows) raised. 'The boiler or furnace.'

Suspicion oozing from every pore, the three soldiers circled the combined furnace and boiler, not finding any suspicous aliens.

'I see no creature,' commented the colonel, uncocking his pistol and holstering it. 'Eh, Doctor?'

Without speaking, the Time Lord strode over to the boiler, looking at the bulk of the machine. He walked around it, nursing one elbow and rumantively chewing a nail.

There! A panel nearly level with the floor, held in place with four screws, one at each corner. The screw's notches were dirtied, but insufficiently to conceal the fact that they had been extracted recently. A closer look at the floor revealed tiny crimson paint scrapings, no doubt chiselled from the screws.

'Excellent!' breathed a voice in his ear, smelling of tobacco and garlic. Colonel Stefan, of course, leaning over his shoulder and glaring with chracteristically ruthless intent.

A gesture later and the two other soldiers stood a few paces from the panel, levelling their guns at it, to the horror of the Doctor.

'No! You mustn't –' he shouted, cut short and drowned out by the enormous hammering din of the automatic weapons fired in the confined space. Big bright splotches appeared on the metal panel where the metal flaked off, centred around black holes where the bullets punctured the metal.

With a shriek like a punctured kettle, the metal panel flew out from the body of the boiler, catching the Doctor squarely on and knocking him to the floor. In turn, John and Masha behind him were unceremoniously flattened, Masha's knife and John's spade flying loose along the uneven concrete floor.

From the narrow space thus revealed, a spitting, bleeding, threshing alien creature erupted in a frenzy of hatred, diving directly at the Doctor. The hapless Stefan intercepted the monster, drawing his pistol fractionally too late to be of use. Both he and the alien rolled across the floor in a flurry of limbs, the pistol going off twice to no useful effect.

Masha, recovering faster than anyone else, lunged for Avtandil's silver-bladed knife. The two paratroopers stood stupidly looking at the Cadaverite, one of it's hands around Stefans throat, which glared back at them, and their eyes went glassy. They both raised their guns and proceeded to shoot each other dead in a mutual exchange of fire that deafened everyone once more. One fell backwards over Masha, pinning her to the floor as the Doctor struggled to his feet, nursing his battered shins. The Cadaverite, utterly unbothered by Stefan shooting it in the chest five times, stood up, loosening the grip it had on the officer. He stood a little erratically, glassy-eyed and levelled his gun at Masha.

The Doctor realised the creature feared the silver weapon above all else, and intended to kill the person who held it, by proxy and at a distance, using the colonel. Silently the Doctor concentrated his own mental powers, not so outmatched as when in the BTR, putting up a shield between Stefan and the creature. The colonel wobbled visibly on his feet, crossing his eyes in a way that might have been comical had the situation not been so serious.

A venemous hiss came from the Cadaverite, and it lunged forward.

Too late! The Time Lord's distraction had lasted long enough for John to catch up his spade, which he swung like an axe, putting twenty stone of muscle, fear and hatred into the stroke. The alien's head leapt from it's shoulders in a gout of black blood, the body crumpled messily onto the floor and Colonel Stefan shook himself back to normality.

'There's your evidence,' said the Doctor, short of breath and with his ears ringing after the gunfire. 'I was going to stun it with my sonic screwdriver until you started shooting, in which case your men would be alive and so would it.'

The silent officer looked incredulously at the remains, rubbing his throat where great red weals showed how he'd been near death. Just to be on the safe side, he dealt the body a resounding kick.

'Decapitation,' said John, hefting the spade. 'Seen it in Hammer horror films. Kills vampires.'

'_When_ you've quite finished,' said Masha, still trapped under the soldier's body. John pushed the corpse aside with little ceremony.

'Up you come, love,' he said, brushing the coal dust and dirt from her dress. Masha knocked his hand away.

'I can manage that and don't get too familiar, for all your airs and graces, young man.'

'Oh. Ah – yes, sorry,' stamered John.

The colonel might have been brutal and ruthless, but he wasn't stupid or blind to the reality of what had just happened.

'Incredible,' he muttered hoarsely, rubbing his neck again. 'A monster out of myths. An oupir.' He darted quick glances at both John and the Doctor.'It didn't affect either of you.'

The Doctor waved a hand wearily.

'I am naturally immune. Ivan here was protected by a contra-hypnotic induction. Really, you don't need to worry about us being controlled.'

By lunchtime the bodies had been brought out of the boiler-room, the two soldiers to lie under a tarpaulin, the Cadaverite to lie in two body bags sewn together. The Colonel used the helicopter's radio to make a call to his headquarters, and came back in a subdued mood.

'We're being recalled to Moscow to make a direct, face-to-face report.'

'Before you go, Colonel, let me tell you what I have deduced about those creatures. They actually _want_ to have you destroy the town and mine with nuclear weapons!'

'Eh? What in the name of the devil's grandmother would they want that for!' exclaimed the officer, bewildered.

'The why I cannot understand, not yet. Given time and a question and answer session with our renegade Zelinski, I may be able to find out.'

A scowl crossed the Colonel's face at the mention of the KGB officer, currently in jail under armed guard. A score remained to be settled there, obviously.

'Enough. I go to report to the Minister of the Interior, in person, with his staff in attendance.' Delivered in a gloomy tone, with more frowning.

'Surely that's a good thing!' exclaimed the Doctor.

'I don't know. The facts are more frightening than the rumours. All I can do is present the facts to the Minister. Expect me back tomorrow.' With the surviving paratroopers he climbed back into the helicopter, turning to give a salute to John and a wave to the Doctor.

'A troubled man,' commented Masha, a hitherto silent witness to the departure. The helicopter's take-off drowned out any more comments she might have wanted to say.

Privately the Doctor agreed. The Colonel's ordered, structured and regulated world had come apart dramatically in providing him with the proof he so desperately sought. Who could guess what this revelation would do in the highest councils of the Kremlin? What it wouldn't do was prevent the town's annihilation; that much remained a cast-iron guarantee.

'I am off for a couple of hours gonk,' declared John. 'I've been blown up, knocked flat, pumped full of drugs and driven by a madman sitting on top of a truck. I'm bushed.'

He got ready to set off back to the town hall.

'Wait a second, Big Man,' scolded Masha. 'You've not eaten yet. Come and have some _schi_ before you have a sleep.'

' "She"?' replied John, mishearing.

' "Gonk"?' replied Masha, picking up on the slang.

'Cabbage soup,' called the Doctor over his shoulder, grinning slightly. John might be off for lunch and a lie down; there remained Zelinski to be dealt with.

The jail turned out to be a squalid affair, a barred cell that smelt like a toilet, where the miserable, sullen bandage-headed Zelinski sat chained to a plank bench, his feet chained together, and a chain from that to a chain around his wrists. An unshaven civilian sentry loitered outside the cell, smoking coarse tobacco in a pipe, casting hateful glances at the prisoner.

'I wonder, can I have some privacy, please?' asked the Doctor. The scruffy sentry looked taken aback at the suggestion. 'All I want to do is talk to the prisoner through the bars. No risk of him escaping. You can even stand at the end of the corridor to keep watch on us.'

To persuade the man – perhaps _bribe_ might be closer – the Doctor suddenly discovered a leathern pouch of tobacco in his pocket, part of the miscellany he carried and forgot about until needed.

'Genuine British shag,' he explained, passing the pouch over. 'From one of HMS Victory's midshipmen, if I recall correctly,' he added, in a quieter tone.

Pulling over a crudely-made wooden stool, he took up station outside the cell, casting a careful eye over the prisoner, who looked back with resignation.

'Come to gloat, have you.'

The Doctor shook his head.

'Not at all. No. You see, I think you can help redeem yourself.' Zelinski merely grunted. 'While the alien controlled you, there was a two-way link between you. It suffered when you were knocked unconscious, and you got hot when it hid next to the boiler. Do you see what I mean?'

'No,' replied Zelinski, not sounding interested in anything at all.

'Oh, come on, man! It knew what you knew – you know what it knew. A mutual mind-link. Check your memories. Check them!'

A sneer appeared on Zelinski's sullen face, to be gradually replaced by a look of mixed amazement and horror as he sorted across the memories in his mind and found more there than there ought to be, much more.

'What is this!' He stared, awe-struck, at the Doctor. 'These things I know – how can this be?'

Patiently, the Doctor explained. A mutual telepathic link, which gave each participant reciprocal access to memories and thoughts. In the case of Zelinski, his mind had been completely in thrall to the far more powerful alien, yet his link gave him access to the alien's memories – and via that alien's telepathic link with all other aliens, to their collective intent.

'They _want_ the mine to be attacked. They _want_ it to be destroyed. They see a way out of their prison, with you as the cause, Doctor.'

Naturally taken aback, the Doctor stayed silent at first.

'You destroyed the roof,' continued Zelinski. 'You gave them an inspiration.'

He carried on, talking faster and faster, his voice rising with a touch of hysteria, until the Doctor rapped sharply on the cell bars.

'Stop that! Alright, Zelinski, I mentioned that you could try to redeem yourself. It seems that you have. Now I need to.'


	6. Chapter 6

The Cadaverites Part Six

**ELEVEN**

The big desk in the mayor's office hosted a variety of plates bearing food. A samovar stood and steamed on a smaller table nearby. At least a good dozen of the townspeople were sat on chairs around a table dragged away from the wall, eating or drinking or smoking.

A large blackboard stood against one wall, flanked by the Doctor. John, not fully awake yet and full of black bread and cabbage soup, sat dozily opposite the Doctor, still feeling the un-named truth drug pound round his head on steel-shod hooves.

'IF I may have your attention, please,' began the Doctor, causing all conversation to cease. 'Thank you. Lieutenant Izvestilniuk?'

'Yes! Pay attention Izvestilniuk, you lazy – oh,' blurted John, lurching upright from his chair, fully awake. A few sniggers sounded from the audience, who mistakenly thought that John was playing the fool.

'Thank you. Please, pay attention at the back. What we discuss here may mean life or death for millions of Russians.'

Most of those assembled had grown up in the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War and several had actually fought in that barbaric, monstrous engagement. Hearing another description of how similar numbers of Russians were at risk again concentrated attention wonderfully. The silence could have been spread on a sandwich.

'Thanks to the aid of Comrade Zelinski, we now know what the Children of the Night plan. Yes, you heard correctly; Comrade Zelinski is helping us with inside information.'

The Doctor left his audience to think amongst themselves for a few seconds, planning and plotting along the lines of revolutionary or counter-revolutionary opportunity. Let them work in that direction.

'I believe that last night saw the least activity against the town defenders since this crisis began?' and many heads nodded in reply and affirmation. 'Which was ascribed to using silver ammunition.' More nodding of heads.

John took his cue from the Doctor's nod, standing up suddenly.

'Wrong!' he shouted, far too loudly for the confined spaces of the mayor's office. 'Wrong. Thanks to their link with Zelinski the Cadaverites knew they were vulnerable to silver bullets. What really made them withdraw was the collapse of Combine Number One's tunnel system. Doctor.'

The Time Lord took up the tale as though it were an educational lesson.

'Deep within the mine, the cavern roof collapsed. This blocked off the inmates of the cavern from the outside world. For the short-term this was a bad thing, leaving them with no outside access. Longer term, it provided them with protection.'

He stood to chalk an outline of the mine, roughly to scale, with the cavern next to it.

'The cavern is situated about half a mile underground, vertically. That gives them protection against even the biggest nuclear warheads. The tunnels turn back on themselves at several points, which provides protection to a limited degree against the blast wave generated from an explosion outside the mine.'

Next, he scribbled in shading across part of the tunnel near to the cavern.

'Here is where the cavern ceiling collapsed. This block of several hundred tons of rubble prevents any blast wave from reaching the cavern. A perfect defence.'

The Doctor returned to the table, sitting and looking hard at those assembled. Klimentov looked distressed that part of his mine was at risk; Zhadov scowled every time the name "Zelinski" came into the conversation.

'I did wonder why the Karausians simply dumped a collection of their criminally insane on this planet, without any attempt to protect the locals. Humans, that is. Now I know. The cavern is a product of Karausian technology, not simply a big hole underground. The cavern has a lining that is sensitive to tampering, designed to give off a huge pulse of ultra-violet light if it is breached, a pulse powerful enough to kill every Cadaverite in there.'

'Why didn't they simply tunnel their way out?' asked Klimentov.

'Simple. If they breached the cavern walls into the open, the cavern ceiling would give off it's UV blast. Oh, I know what you're going to say – but your miners breached the cavern from the outside, an event it wasn't designed to cope with.'

Zhadov grunted.

'And that traitor Zelinski told you all this? As if you can trust him!'

'As a theory it fits the known facts. It also gives us a method of attacking the aliens; deliberate sabotage of their cavern.'

'Which would also roast anyone who manages the job,' interjected the female doctor. 'Ultra-violet radiation isn't as lethal as gamma rays but enough of them will cook you like an Easter goose.'

'Quite so,' concluded the Doctor.

'Why bother?' asked the mayor. 'If they're stuck down there, good riddance, I say. Let them rot in the dark for another five hundred years!'

The Doctor shook his head slowly.

'You cannot risk it. Before your miners broke through that cavern wall the Greater Will consisted of, at most, three hundred individuals. Now, after breaking loose for the space of five days, they have nearly two thousand aliens and hundreds of humans to feed upon. And, most importantly, an exit to the outside world.'

'Plus all the mining equipment they've been able to lay their scaly talons upon,' muttered Klimentov.

'And they know all about _us_,' added Zhadov. 'Not just humans, but about the Soviet Union. Who knows where they could emerge next!'

Not that the Doctor felt at ease with his decision about the Cadaverites. Deliberate killing was utterly repugnant to him, and he only brooked this decision because the aliens were so completely amoral. The choice was stark; kill the aliens or they would run rampant across Russia, killing countless millions before they were stopped.

'I have more bad news for you,' he said, taking a decision to reveal more information than the situation called for. 'In forty eight hours the Kremlin will authorize the use of nuclear weapons to destroy Trivelho and Nickel Extraction Combine Number One.'

An immediate shocked silence fell, to be broken by anxious questions; how did he know? Did he really mean it? what about evacuation?

'I cannot reveal my sources. Nothing can change that decision. Our only hope is to be elsewhere when the town is destroyed.'

Another thread came into the tapestry of deceit, delivered by Zhadov. Part of his motivation lay in simple self-preservation, and another part, more difficult to define, lay in professional pride. Besides, he owed those paratroopers a few lumps.

'None of you idlers were counting paratroopers, were you? No, I thought not. Twelve arrived with the Colonel, who left with three bodies and eight live specimens. One man remained behind.'

An error like that irked John, who took issue straight away.

'That's bloody sloppy work! These people are supposed to be professionals? I'm not impressed!'

'I didn't say "left behind", did I?' replied Zhadov, coldly. 'He _remained_ behind, and remained on purpose. We have a spy for the Kremlin at loose in Trevilho, with an unidentified agenda.'

This news came as less of a shock to the Russians than it did to John; they were used to being treated with suspicion and spied upon by various covert agencies.

Nearly a thousand miles away, Colonel Stefan sat at the end of a table polished to a high sheen, facing a parade of faces he recognised from newsreels and papers.

Shrugging nervously, he cast a look around the committee room. Rich brocade curtains, gilt trim on the dado rail, elaborate frames around the obligatory paintings of Lenin, dried flowers arranged tastefully on the lacquered tabletop. A smell of furniture polish hung in the air. Altogether a world away from the messrooms and headquarters he was accustomed to.

His arrival at Chkalevsky's secret airfield heralded a dizzying transfer to another helicopter, a GAZ truck for a short journey by road, another transfer to a limousine, a short drive to the Kremlin, then a hasty journey within. His commanding officer, General Kubinsky, greeted him briefly and worriedly in passing on a staircase.

'Watch your step and your lip, Vasha. Big things are afoot, big enough to bury you.'

The monster's corpse had been taken away the second he set foot on the ground at Chkalevsky. By now, he mused, it was being dissected by doctors and scientists. Perhaps the secrets it held would help to sustain the Motherland's lead over the United States and associated lackeys.

And now he sat, nervous as a schoolboy, facing a dozen men from the very highest positions of the Politburo. General Kubinsky would normally have been in attendance, presenting the information with Stefan merely there to provide confirmation of details. Today the honour – and responsibility – lay solely on Stefan. The Ministers must want the least possible number of witnesses. Indeed, there was no official stenographer, for the first time he could remember. He recognised the Premier, Kosygin, whom anyone across the world would recognise, and from various professional engagements the KGB Chairman, Andropov and the Ministry of Defence chairman, Grechko. First Secretary Brezhnev wasn't there; Colonel Stefan wasn't to know but the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was holidaying at Sochi on the Black Sea coast.

Premier Kosygin began the discussion.

'Firstly, no notes, not from anyone here. If a formal decision is made tonight then I will draw up a memorandum, to be approved retrospectively by you. Until that happens nothing is to be committed to paper.'

No written proof of anything being decided, realised Stefan, also understanding why the stenographer was absent.

'Comrade Scholokov, is the roadblock still secure?' asked the Premier.

Ah, must be the MVD chairman, thought Stefan.

Comrade Scholokov nodded.

'The troops at the roadblock report thirty-two counter-revolutionary elements liquidated,' he said, blandly euphemising the killing of thirty-two civilians. 'A temporary encampment of displaced persons has been established approximately six hundred metres from the roadblock and troop cordon.'

Kosygin's brow clouded upon hearing the news of dead civilians. Sholokov noticed and carried on.

'I have patrols in surrounding towns and villages searching for any Trivelho residents who may have escaped before the roadblock and security cordon were established. So far we have not found anyone.'

'Good, good. We have managed to contain this thing. What about the troops in the cordon?'

Grechko pursed his lips, collected his thoughts and replied.

'Like the MVD troops, the Red Army soldiers have been briefed that the town citizens are carriers of plague, to be executed without warning. The perimeter is established with one man to every six metres, backed up with troop carriers, sniper teams and helicopter overflights. Nobody has yet tried to escape overland, but the soldiers are ready if they do.'

Lastly, Kosygin turned to Andropov.

'What of the rest of the world? Do they know what has happened or is happening?'

The KGB Chairman pushed his glasses higher on his nose. He felt sure he'd heard of this awkward northern town before in a different context and had his Archival Research team looking for information. So far nothing unusual had come to light.

'Put shortly – no. Not that we know a great deal ourselves –' and he cast a sideways glance at Stefan ' – but the Western media are focussing on Eisenhower's funeral and the latest offensive by the anti-imperialist people's army in Vietnam. There are also rumours and speculations about our recent engagements along the Ussuri River with the Chinese. It might be useful to leak information to selected Western media about those clashes. Maskirovskaya. Direct attention east while we act in the west.'

The Premier nodded.

'Make sure that they do not find anything out about Trevilho! I cannot stress that enough. To think, a town in the Soviet Union completely over-run and we can do nothing about it. The Americans must not learn about this; the Chinese neither. It would be disastrous.'

The sole phone in the room rang, to be answered by a man Stefan didn't recognise. The stranger listened intently for several seconds, then sighed and replaced the handset.

'That was the scientific investigation team at the airfield. The doctor put the report briefly – "I don't know what it _is_ but I can tell you it isn't human and it isn't a hoax."

A subtle change in the atmosphere became apparent to Stefan. These men, who held the fate of millions in their hands, had hoped he would be proved wrong. Now, with the facts at last before them, they were being made to face the truth.

Premier Kosygin let out a long breath, running a hand through his short sandy hair and looked directly at the officer.

'So, Colonel, your testimony becomes very weighty. Please begin.'

Stefan described his visit to the insanity of Trivelho; the destruction, the missing hundreds, a people under seige. He described the Children of the Night, the _oupir_, and how they behaved. The Politburo listened, maybe with a sense of disbelief, but they listened.

'If those things escape from Trivelho and get loose, they will spread like a disease, an intelligent disease. They must be destroyed, the town and mine also, even if it means civilians dying.'

Taking such a step would be an overt acknowledgement that the situation had escalated beyond normal control, and the politicians present didn't want that.

'You cannot casually eradicate a whole town of several thousand people,' said Andropov. 'You make free with the lives of Soviet citizens.'

'Sir, if you wish, I will take a helicopter into Trivelho and remain there until it is destroyed around me,' replied Stefan, a righteous anger driving his response. 'That is how strongly I feel about these monsters.'

Kosygin tutted at both of them.

'Since you have met these things face-to-face and survived, Colonel, sending you back to Trivelho is not on the agenda. Now, Comrade Grechko, how would you plan to eradicate these monsters?'

'Bomb the town and use missiles to destroy the mine.'

Stefan shook his head.

'These things hide in cellars and sewers and any space out of the light. Bombing is not guaranteed to kill them. And you need a positive guarantee.'

'Very well, they shall be gassed first,' added Grechko, acidly. He clearly didn't enjoy being criticised by a mere colonel.

Once again, Stefan shook his head.

'We have no idea whether gas will affect them or not, nor what concentration is required. No, what is needed is a nuclear weapon. Two, actually, one each for the town and one for the mine.'

Predictably, this recommendation did not go down well.

'Two? Only two?' replied Gerchko sarcastically. 'Why not four to do the job properly? Pah!' and he exhaled sharply with disgust, glancing at the man who sat next to him, a burly man with a military mien.

One of the strangers whom Stefan didn't recognise spoke up, a man with pince-nez glasses and a fussy little goatee.

'Let me get the details of these creatures' reproductive practice clarified, Colonel,' he said, in a clipped tone. 'They do not procreate as humans do. Instead they introduce their own genetic material into a host organism. Correct?'

Stefan nodded. A couple of ministers looked curiously at the man with the goatee. The colonel decided he looked like a man with a background in science.

'Then, over an undetermined yet short time-span, perhaps as quickly as forty-eight hours, the host is transformed – metamorphosed, if you like – into one of these alien lifeforms.'

Another nod from the colonel.

'Similar to a virus, then. Your information is that once the process starts, it cannot be reversed? And that over one and a half thousand of these entities have been created by converting human beings?'

The pince-nez glasses came off and the questioner lightly massaged his nose, staring at the tabletop and thinking.

'Your quote about these creatures approximating to an "intelligent disease" is closer to the truth than perhaps you realise. I absolutely concur that they need to be destroyed with nuclear weapons, and as quickly as possible.'

'You cannot be serious!' interrupted Grechko. 'Using gas is the most extreme measure I will consider.'

'If you don't want my advice, don't invite me to your meetings,' snapped the other man in reply, crossly and not the least intimidated by the minister.

'Please tell us why you back Colonel Stefan's desire to speed Soviet citizens to oblivion,' ordered Kosygin, with heavy humour.Once again the scientist removed his glasses to rub his nose.

'Simple mathematical increase on an exponential scale.' Seeing lack of comprehension, the speaker enlarged.

'At present there are one thousand five hundred of these creatures. Within forty-eight hours they can double that number to three thousand. After a further forty-eight hours they would number six thousand. Forty eight hours after that, twelve thousand. Twenty-four thousand. Forty-eight thousand. Ninety-six thousand. Within twenty days there would be over a million of them. They would spread, indeed, like an intelligent disease, across the Soviet Union and across the border into Finland. Even a single one reaching Moscow would be a disaster.'

Suddenly people got nervous.

'This one at the airfield – it is dead, isn't it?' asked Kosygin. 'No question of it spreading?' he added, somewhat ungrammatically.

'Dead as a stone, Secretary,' said the man who'd taken the phone call. 'And ready to be burnt at a moment's notice.'

'Then give the word!' said Kosygin, snappishly, spurring a fervent phone call.

'The Red Army would stop them,' stated Grechko, putting up a straw man. 'Once they came out into daylight.'

'Then they wouldn't emerge from hiding until dark,' replied Stefan. 'Sending any troops against them would merely provide them with more food and converts. Do you really want them able to ride around in tanks and armoured personnel carriers?'

'Action must be taken as soon as possible!' urged the scientific speaker. 'I cannot imagine why these creatures do not spread out from the mine already, but they will eventually.'

'What would the casualties be if the town had – however reluctantly – to be destroyed?' asked Andropov. Scholokov fielded the question, doing quick calculations.

'At the very worst, three thousand people. The cordon needs to be moved back out of the danger zone, thus becoming less effective. Some people might get away, especially those near the roadblock itself.'

Mr Goatee got very agitated at that.

'You need to maintain a hermetic seal around the town!'

'Calm down, Professor,' chided the Premier. 'I take it that we cannot evacuate people for fear of their being infected?' He got a nod from the Professor and sighed ruefully. 'Then our cover story has, in a particularly unpleasant way, come full circle.'

'Not just that,' said Stefan, recalling those awful blank seconds when he'd been a thrall of the monster in the boiler-room. 'The aliens may have implanted commands in the citizens, taken over their minds. Unlike the injuries they inflict on victims for conversion, mental control doesn't show.'

Nobody spoke for a minute after that. The Premier knew a final decision rested with him.

'Very well,' he said, still looking at the table. 'We will proceed in reverse. A cover story for the destruction of Trivelho needs to be created. A restriction on national and local media will be implimented. The Red Army will be tasked to destroy the town, the Air Force will deal with the mine.'

Making sure both services came in for equal praise or blame, realised Colonel Stefan.

The burly plain-clothes officer next to Grechko leant and whispered in the chairman's ear. Grechko listened for a minute, then nodded and motioned the man to continue.

'Comrade Chairman, I have a suggestion for neutralising Trevilho. Rather than use rocketry or missiles, which might alarm NATO or the Americans, we could use nuclear artillery shells. A salvo of ten S-1 rounds would give a combined yield of twenty kilotons, ten groundbursts each of two kilotons. Unlike rockets or missiles an artillery shell can be fired with a very small degree of error at the target. The blast zone would be small enough for the cordon to remain in it's original place. We can send in the howitzer unit from North Western Front resources.'

Premier Kosygin nodded. He already knew that this scandalous affair must be kept totally secret. To date Secretary Brezhnev hadn't called to find out what the hell was going on, which meant it remained secret in the Soviet Union so far.

The phone rang again and the same man answered it. A grim nod, a tight-lipped smile and he told the group what they wanted to hear.

'The monster at Chkalevsky has been burnt to ashes, the ashes mixed into cement, the cement put into an oil drum and the drum will be flown out to and dropped in the Caspian Sea within six hours.'

'Good,' said Kosygin, and meant it. 'Get the surgeon officer there to collect all notes and personally destroy them. Then have the autopsy team split up and sent to different military commands. Now, how will the mine be dealt with?'

Once again the burly plain-clothes officer replied.

'A Tupolev Sixteen bomber, flying from Chkalevsky, will use an AS2 cruise missile to hit the mine. Nuclear-tipped, with a one kiloton warhead. Again, large enough to totally destroy the mine, small enough not to cause problems outside the immediate blast area, Premier. Using both delivery methods allows us to be precise in targetting without having to risk contamination from contact with these creatures.'

For which read that the Americans and NATO will not be certain what has happened, interpreted the Colonel. They may suspect we have been throwing nuclear weapons around, for undetermined reasons. Suspect, unable to prove.

Premier Kosygin seemed to come to a decision and looked long and hard at the various members grouped around the table.

'Very well. We are agreed that the town of Trevilho and Mining Complex have to be destroyed, for the sake of the socialist revolution, the Soviet Union and not least of all, the whole human race.'

His eyes glittered with determination and malice.

'Furthermore, I know all of you. If there are any leaks, any leaks at all, not only will you all suffer, all of you, but your whole counter-revolutionary support structure will suffer.'

Colonel Stefan blinked at this threat, not knowing quite what the Premier meant. "Counter-revolutionary support structure" implied other people involved in – oh yes. Families. Families and relatives. They would suffer.

**TWELVE**

John was awoken by, of all things, firm pressure on his earlobe.

'AHH!' he yelled, sitting upright abruptly, reaching for a non-existent gun and looking wildly about himself, ready to kill at a moment's notice.

'I see you're with us again,' said a mildly ironic voice at his elbow. The Doctor, of course, wearing an expression definable as slightly smug. 'There's work to be done, you know. Care to join me?'

The officer rubbed his eyes furiously and nodded.

'Go on then. Who do we have to assassinate?'

'Nothing so dramatic. A reconaissance is all. Are you up to it?'

Twenty minutes later John wished he'd said "no" to that last question. The two of them were plodding across snowy fields of nothing outside Trevilho, headed directly south according to the Doctor's compass. On three occasions a helicopter flew nearby, plainly checking the two travellers out.

'So – the nuclear artillery is still going to fall on us?' asked John. 'We didn't stop it?'

Slightly ahead of him and to the left, the Doctor paused in his trek through the virginal snows. They had to be careful to avoid old mine workings hidden under the snow.

'John, history cannot be changed. Or, perhaps, _ought_ not to be changed; even the smallest alteration can have incalculable consequences – Ray Bradbury wrote – or will write, I'm not quite sure of the date of publication – a typically lyric story about just that. Those atomic artillery shells will still fall here in two days time, because that is what historically happened. What we are doing now is moving between the interstices of time, attempting to change details without altering the overall pattern.'

John cast a wondering eye at his companion. So they were attempting to change history on the sly, undermining reality.

'I take it that's a tricky job, managing to make small changes without altering things in the future?'

'Strictly speaking, it's impossible, unless you happen to be a genius.'

'And you're a genius?' asked John distractedly, feeling melting snow slide down the top of his socks.

The Doctor turned in mid-stride and gave a cheerful grin.

'Let's hope I'm as clever as I like to think I am!'

Their pace slowed as the Doctor skirted a suspiciously large hollow in the snow that looked like a crater.

'Possibly old mine workings, when they were after tin. Better safe than sorry.' He cast around and found a stunted tree, from which he broke a branch, which got used as a probe, sounding for holes ahead of them. Twice they skirted dubious pockets where the stick broke through a crust of snow.

'Dangerous. Why don't they mark them or sign them?' pondered John. His travelling companion wagged a logical finger.

'Nobody ever comes this way, John. They use the road.'

By this time they were well clear of the town, and John began to look nervously for Red Army troops making up the cordon, certain that they would be out here. Ahead lay a long stretch of pines, snow dusted picturesquely over them.

'Doctor, shouldn't we start to worry about getting shot about now? If I was part -'

'Stop right there,' came a low and menacing voice, issuing directly from the pine trees. Both travellers stopped.

'Turn round and go back,' growled the voice. 'And be quick about it, too.'

The Doctor tutted impatiently.

'Look, we're not trying to escape, we're only trying to see if there's a route out of town for the people trapped there.'

'Bugger off!' said the voice, plainly rattled. 'You come any closer, mate, and I shoot. I volunteered to come out here because I didn't fancy mowing down kids and women at the roadblock, but I'll shoot if you come closer.'

'Thanks a lot. Really big-hearted,' muttered John.

'Very well. We're leaving,' called the Doctor in a matter-of-fact voice. 'Remember this point on the perimeter,' he whispered to John, who was muttering darkly under his breath about soldiers who'd willingly shoot women and children.

'This is Russia, John,' his partner explained. 'Tsarist, Bolshevik or democratic, it isn't simply like the West with a funny accent. People serve the system absolutely, out of belief or fear. Remember your own statement about shooting striking miners.'

Ahead of them, while they tramped over the snowy landscape, several dark figures moved stealthily into cover, behind a mound atop which long blades of pale grass were visible.

'Did you see them?' asked John, feeling the lack of a weapon – the Doctor had insisted he visit the cordon unarmed.

'Yes. Don't look at them. Mutual disdain is the best solution.'

'You sound as if you know them.'

'They're various deserters, I would guess, from the MVD. Didn't fancy dying in the cause of defending Trevilho at the beginning, before we arrived. And now they're stuck out here.'

John's comments on deserters were nearly as blunt as those about Russian soldiers.

When they reached the town, behind the ruins of a blasted warehouse, the Doctor turned to look back at their route. Behind the copse where the considerate sniper had warned them away, black lumpish vehicles were moving. And, far overhead, a helicopter sped south.

Scratch Plan One, he ruefully reflected. It had occurred to him that they might be able to use the BTR in the town square to ferry townspeople, twenty at a time, out over the snows and beyond the perimeter. No longer possible with helicopter overflights and armoured vehicles lurking beyond the trees.

No; he told himself, that wouldn't work anyway. Moving the population over the cordon merely exchanged a swift death for an ignominous hunt and probable execution. No, he needed to move them out of harm's way in every sense of the word, out of Trevilho and out of the grasp of the Soviet regime.

Or at least _this_ regime, he slowly considered, the germ of an idea forming in his head, and then realising John was speaking.

'I said, Doctor, what now? To survive a nuclear attack the people here need to start digging holes and fortifying basements. Not that I think anyone will survive nine atomic artillery shells arriving one after the other.'

For a moment the statement didn't register with the Doctor, until he realised the import it carried.

'Thank you, John, you've given me an idea. Two ideas, actually.' Much to John's frustration, that was the extent of the explanation he got.

Back in the town square people still clustered in small groups, once family even playing the accordion mournfully. Without counting it was difficult to be certain but there seemed to be fewer people present. Eyes turned to the lanky figure of the Doctor and his large escort, both of whom strode over the cobbles to the town hall.

There were fewer civilians or soldiers in the foyer. One of them hailed John and he recognised Shovels, wearing a bandolier of shotgun shells.

'Any news?'

'Afraid not. We've been out testing the military cordon and there aren't any gaps in it.'

Shovels shrugged, lighting a cigarette after offering one to John out of politeness.

'We reckoned that. Some folk tried sneaking out past the soldiers. They haven't come back.'

John nodded in mutual concern, trotting off to keep up with the Doctor.

'That's dangerous,' commented the Time Lord. 'The army will shoot to kill anyone trying to get past them in daylight and at night any escapees will be easy prey for the Children of the Night.'

The usual two dozen dignitaries in the antechamber of the mayor's office had dwindled also, to a half dozen. The skeptical female doctor sat dozing on a chair, a lit cigarette burning down to her fingers. Kopensky sat on one chair, his legs propped on another, cap pulled down over his eyes. The town engineer, Doctor Pavel, Avtandil and Zhadov made up the rest of the group.

Without knocking, the Doctor opened the mayor's office door, walking in as if the room belonged to him.

'Well well. Just who I least expected to see,' said Colonel Stefan, comfortably posed on the mayor's chair. Another new arrival sat on a side table – a large military-pattern radio.

'Come to gloat, have you?' said John, snappishly.

'Ditto!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'Where's the mayor?'

'Either asleep, hiding or trying to reinforce this building's basement. Somewhat foolishly, I feel.'

An opened bottle of Stolichnaya sat on the table, next to a small glass. A third of the bottle had gone, doubtless into Stefan's bloodstream.

'Why foolishly?' asked John. Stefan narrowed his eyes.

'You didn't ask "why?", I notice. Not only that, you happened to tell the people here that the Kremlin was going to order the town's nuclear elimination. Before they took the decision themselves!'

Oops, thought John. The Colonel might be drunk, but his wits didn't seem addled and he was certainly hostile.

'Zhadov!' shouted Stefan. After a few seconds the burly KGB officer came into the room, looking grumpy at being ordered around by Stefan.

'Yes?' he asked, not bothering to sound remotely deferential.

'Take this – this person, Izvestilniuk, and lock him in prison.'

'Why?' asked Zhadov, sounding insolent. Stefan frowned in angry disbelief.

'Why? Why! Because I order it!'

'Get stuffed,' replied Zhadov, ducking out of the door. John looked in startled amusement at the Doctor. The Doctor was less amused; he saw the beginnings of anarchy taking hold, which would imperil his plans.

'Comrade Colonel, would you mind explaining to me why Izvestilniuk needs to be placed in jail?'

The tone was well-judged. Conciliatory without being patronising or obsequious.

Stefan produced a pistol from one of the drawers in the mayor's desk. Despite being inebriated he retained the sense to avoid pointing it anywhere near his visitors.

'Eh? Eh? Because he isn't who he claims to be. I had a thorough check on him performed in Moscow. The Politburo granted me the authority. A thorough check. He doesn't exist officially.'

'A spy!' declaimed the Doctor, theatrically, turning to John. 'You deceiver!' whose dramatic impact was lessened by the huge wink he gave, unseen by Colonel Stefan. Without giving either man time to react, the Doctor marched John over to the door, opened it and propelled John forward.

'Find out what you can,' he whispered to the puzzled soldier, then continued in a loud, declamatory voice.

'Comrade Zhadov, would you be so good as to escort Izvestilniuk to jail?' to the accompaniement of another large wink.

'Oh, go on, only because it's you,' grumbled Zhadov, lurching to his feet and dragging a baffled John away.

Having shut the door, the Time Lord faced the colonel again.

'You haven't mentioned the spy you left here in Trevilho, Colonel. Your extra paratrooper.'

The Colonel smiled slyly.

'Ah, yes. An officer from the GRU, assigned to me for "special duties". I was told not to ask questions about him or his work here.'

'What about myself?'

Stefan poured himself another shot of vodka, knocking it back in one.

'You. Yes, you. The Party records mentioned you at what we now have to call "Volgagrad". Grechko nearly emptied his bowels when I described your sonic device. You two must have crossed paths back in the Great Patriotic War, eh?'

'Something like that,' admitted the Doctor, sitting down opposite the colonel. 'Your indulging to excess in alcohol is not becoming, Colonel. You have standards to keep up as an officer in the Spetznaz.'

The other man snorted with laughter.

'Aren't you the wit, Kuznetz. Doctor Kuznetz If I were still an officer in the Soviet Armed Forces then you would be perfectly correct.'

Still chuckling, the ex-officer put the gun away and gestured at the radio.

'We both parachuted in by helicopter. I radioed in the resignation of my commission. Not legal, but I wanted to make the point.'

A nasty prickling sensation crawled up the Doctor's spine.

'Resignation. Parachute. You make this sound like a one-way mission, Colonel.'

The other man looked calmly at the Doctor.

'It certainly is, Doctor. I was trained for infiltration and sabotage missions in Germany that I would not have come back from, discharging my duty. This is exactly the same. I intend to be here when those nuclear shells drop.'

A stricken silence hung in the room. The question on the Doctor's lips didn't need pronouncing.

'I condemned the population here to death, Doctor, on the grounds that they could all be under the influence of the aliens. That same risk of alien influence applies to myself. I got taken-over in the boiler room under this room, this very room. It would be akin to cowardice in the face of the enemy to avoid taking responsibility for that.'

No wonder he's drinking himself silly! thought the Doctor silently. Impelled by duty and conscience to commit what amounted to suicide.

'You didn't explain why it is foolish to reinforce the town hall's basement.'

Stefan nodded to nothing in particular.

'The town square is geographical centre of Trevilho. Any artillery shells will range there first. The shock waves will shatter the basement under this building like an egg-box. Still, it stops people from panicking.'

Rather a negative valuation, in the Doctor's opinion.

'Ah – Colonel, would you happen to know how the atomic artillery will be used against Trevilho? In detail? I ask because a man of your rank and specialisation would be more likely to know.'

The flattery didn't hurt. Stefan himself hadn't actually thought this process over and the question sparked a reflective minute.

'Okay. The mine – destroyed by an aircraft with a missile. Only two people involved, they being the aircrew. Very well. Now, the Kremlin, Moscow Centre, the Red Army, all will be keeping the number of people involved to a minimum.' There was a pause whilst the colonel took another shot of vodka, then a spoonful of caviar from a jar hidden in another desk drawer. 'Remember that, that's how they think, these people. So, they will have only one gun firing shells. No, actually, they'll have two, just in case one has a malfunction. So, two guns. Only one gun crew, with the crew selected for political reliability. Oh, the atomic shells. They will be kept separately, delivered and guarded by Spetnaz troops. Two tractor vehicles for the guns, one gun crew, warhead vehicle. Twelve men at an estimate.'

Another pause, more caviar.

'The crew will have a plan of Trevilho and know the blast radius of their shells. I think they are two kiloton yield, can't swear to it. Anyway, they will plot where to fire the shells to destroy the town, using conventional ammunition to get the range. Once the fall of shot is judged accurate, they'll use atomic rounds.'

All of this was absorbed intently by the Doctor.

'You're sure of this?'

Stefan shrugged.

'Artillery tactics aren't my field. My best guess. They might use two guns to fire the shells. What they won't do is fire them all off at once. Takes too many men and risks shell explosion affecting other shells.'

Excellent! exulted the Doctor, careful to avoid the feeling becoming obvious.

By the time he finished describing Trevilho's probable destruction, the colonel's speech had started to slur.

'Thank you for your very valuable information, Colonel Stefan,' said the Doctor, quietly departing.

Outside the mayor's room, he scanned the assembled town citizens. The man he wanted, the town's engineer, looked up at him with dull eyes.

'I wonder, do you have a pen and paper?' asked the Doctor. 'A calculator? No, sorry, I mean a slide-rule.'

The other man shook his head at first, then realised he did have a slide-rule in his coat pocket.

'I have paper and a pencil,' said the female doctor, waking up fully and rubbing a small burn on her fingers. 'Are you making a will?' she asked, joking macarbrely.

'No need to make a will yet,' announced the Doctor cheerfully. His enthusiasm wasn't faked; he had an interesting technical problem to solve with a deadline and limited resources, a situation that satisfied him enormously. If he survived!

First of all he needed to do mental calculations about what equipment he needed. Whether there were the resources actually present in Trevilho was another question; he'd definitely need to compromise when actually constructing his proposed device.

'Do you happen to have any insulated, high-resistance, heavy-duty cable lying about?' he asked. 'Four or five thousand metres will do.'

The engineer goggled mightily. That length of cable could connect them to the next town.

The Doctor carried on, seemingly unaware of what impression he was making.

'Let's see, what else? Portable generating plant, parabolic reflectors, electronic control circuitry, Yagi aerials. Sorry, I didn't ask your name –'

'Vassili Bogdanov,' said the flustered man. 'What – I mean, all this equipment – what are you going to do with it?'

'Well, to be blunt, I am going to create a form of shield, one that will protect all beneath it from attack.'

Vassili merely stared. He knew the reputation of this white-haired stranger already – but really! A shield!

'How will this work?' he asked, curious in a manner not felt since his days at the junior gymnasium.

'By means of an oscillating fractional-Newton micro-mesh in the pico-farad range, layered at ninety degrees perpendicularly,' replied the Doctor. He skated over the finer details with that description.

'And how will it protect us?' asked Natasha Irinovna, the skeptical doctor. 'Already the people here are shoring up cellars, bracing walls, digging trenches. That is practical work. What you are suggesting is – fantasy. A nonsense.'

With a penetrating look, the Doctor responded.

'Doctor Abakumov. I do not deal in fiction. What I have to say is cold hard fact. You may not like it, but it is nevertheless fact.'

The fact that the Doctor used her surname, which she had never mentioned to him, made Doctor Abakumov promptly shut up. Her acute green eyes kept a watch on the Doctor whilst he spoke.

'Also, I need a bulldozer. Or, at least, a means of moving several hundred tons of rubble from a collapsed warehouse.'

Kopensky, wall-eyed from fatigue, waved at the Doctor.

'I – we – can manage that. Simple job, moving a lot of bricks from one place to another.'

The Doctor looked at him with a peculiarly intense gaze.

'The warehouse at Baikalskaya Prospekt. Blown up by one of your roving dynamite squads. You need to uncover a large blue cuboid artefact. Can you manage that?'

The MVD officer nodded maniacally, grinning at his new-found mentor.

'Sure, absolutely, boss. Don't worry.' Off he went, stumbling thanks to fatigue.

The Doctor and Vassili remained alone in the town hall as other persons left to carry on with the business of trying to protect against the anticipated attack.

'They aren't persuaded,' murmured the Doctor to himself. This was worrying. If he lacked enough helpers then he hadn't a chance of completing the work on time.

'Nor am I,' replied Vassili. 'I mean to say, a shield made from bits of cable!'

'How do I convince people. Oh, if only time wasn't so short!'

That last phrase triggered a recent memory of the Doctor's; seeing a film. It had been on television at the Aylesbury mess quarters, and he sat and laughed at it, to the irksome annoyance of the UNIT officers also watching it: "The Time Machine". The Time Traveller in that film had persuaded his audience of his scientific credentials by creating a scale model of his own time-travelling device, a miniature replica.

Vassili jumped when the stranger smacked a fist into the palm of his hand.

'Of course! A scale model - Vassili, can you locate a couple of hundred metres of electrical cable? And metal flan cases? And paper-clips, lots of paper-clips, thousands if you can.'

While the Doctor's mind raced across countless possibilities, John had more immediate concerns: the prison cell he shared with Zelinski. Zhadov had propelled him to the town square, then handed him over to a loitering member of the civilian militia.

'Going for a nice kip, are we?' sneered John in farewell. Zhadov had looked back in puzzlement, not making any sense of the argot.

'Put him in the gaol,' ordered the KGB officer, wondering what a "kip" might be. He ignored the hostile looks from citizens of Trevilho who clustered in the town square, nevertheless wriggling his back as if it was being stealthily stabbed.

The militiaman walked John at gunpoint to the seedy and down-at-heel prison building, where an equally seedy and down-at-heel guard armed with a shotgun took over. Vodka fumes were detectable on his breath from a metre away.

'Geddin there,' slurred the guard, indicating a cell with an occupant. The door stood slightly ajar. John carefully opened it and slid inside.

'Nofugginmessinaboud,' said the guard, locking the cell after five attempts at getting the key into the lock. 'No – no – . Shtaystill,' and he lurched off down the narrow corridor to collapse onto a stool.

'I fear our sentry is inebriated,' joked John to the other occupant of the cell, who lay hidden underneath a thin cotton blanket. There was no reply.

'Are you okay?' asked John, feeling hairs on his neck begin to bristle. He stretched a foot out to kick the other person.

'No! No, I am not okay,' replied the other man, throwing back the sheet and sitting bolt upright.

'Zelinski!' blurted John.

A variety of solid soviet citizens, scientists and townspeople sat in a semi-circle around the improvised podium. The focus of their attention was a flat stage of about six metres squared, presently occupied by a scale replica of Trevilho. Over the model hung an array of wires in a checkerboard pattern, ready for the intervention of the Doctor.

'I understand that certain elements of the populace are not convinced of the efficacy of Soviet science,' began the Doctor, well aware that "certain elements" included everybody except himself, John and Masha. 'So we are here to re-affirm that effectiveness. Comrade Vassili, can you begin the count?'

Vassili, off to one side and not feeling especially happy about it, nodded sternly and began the count. At Zero he pulled the contact lever home. A sudden bright spike of energy illuminated the room, varying in intensity, casting shadows everywhere. The smell of ozone assailled nostrils.

'Regard!' shouted the Doctor, pointing at the streaky pie-lid of energy now poised in a rough hemisphere over the display table. Visible beneath the surging energy waves was the outlay of a miniature town. Impressed noises came from the audience.

'My purpose in creating this scale replica is to demonstrate that a large-scale version is possible,' announced the Doctor, only partially to those present. 'I shall now demonstrate how effective the partial version is.' He nodded to Vassili, who nodded to the person responsible – Semyon, with a ten-kilo sledgehammer. The sledgehammer swung up and down in a rapid arc, hitting the glowing field in the middle and bouncing off equally rapidly. Speechless, Semyon rubbed his hands where the unexpected jar had caused friction. Even more impressed noises came from the audience. Vassili felt his jaw sag open foolishly, knew that he looked foolish and didn't care. The next test involved Semyon and a shotgun.

'A high-velocity weapon would create unpredictable ricochets,' explained the Doctor. 'You may also want to cover your ears,' he added, covering his own.

With a great double retort, Semyon fired both barrels at the energy field, doing nothing more than create a gentle pattering as the deformed lead shot fell to the floor in front of the unharmed model.

'Now,' pronounced the Doctor with a great deal more patience than he felt was merited, 'Can we start to get equipment together for the large scale version?'

Evgeniy Klimentov came to talk to the Time Lord once Vassili had dispersed the watchers with a shopping list of items to acquire and bring to the town hall square. He gave the Doctor a long, hard stare, obviously thinking intensely.

'You say these oupirs are actually aliens, criminals, stranded here a long way from home.'

The Doctor nodded, wondering where the conversation was going.

Evgeniy gestured at the cardboard boxes representing Trivelho.

'That shield – you created it single-handed in a matter of hours. A task the entire science establishment of the Soviet Union cannot master. For that matter, the entire world, not just the Soviet Union.'

'My dear chap –' the Doctor began, before being interrupted.

'I can guess you are also a long way from home, Doctor. But not a criminal.' Evgeniy sighed. 'There are so many questions I would like to ask, and we have no time.'

Vassili returned from speeding his assistants on their way.

'Okay, Doctor, you powered the model's shield from the mains. How can we power the real-life version?'

'That, I'm afraid, is the weak link, literally. We'll have to use power from the town's own electrical supply, cabled in to the town square.'

Evgeniy's eyes widened in alarm.

'Not a good idea, Doctor! It'll be dark soon and the lighting in the town square is all that keeps the monsters at bay.'

'Not tonight,' corrected the Doctor. 'But definitely tomorrow night. In the meantime I need to get a bit of planning done.' He stopped before turning back to the mining engineer. 'Why aren't you down in a basement making it blast-proof?'

'I don't fancy getting slashed to bits by one of the Children of the Night. A few people have stumbled across them, hiding from the daylight. Besides, nothing we can do in the time available would be any use.'

The Doctor wagged a chiding finger.

'Don't be so negative! Positive action is never wasted.'

'Got any smokes?' asked Zelinski, not holding any grudges against the man who nearly killed him with a spade.

'No. I don't smoke.'

'Pity. What are you in here for?'

John sighed. He cast a sombre eye over the dirty, dingy little room, wondering how much of the truth to tell his fellow-prisoner.

'Colonel Stefan think's I'm a dangerous enemy spy.'

Zelinski cocked his head in a knowing way. His eyes narrowed.

'Oh, I wouldn't say that. Not all of it, anyway. You've helped to save lives, killed the Cadaverites, rescued prisoners. That must make you friendly, mustn't it?'

'Yes,' replied John slowly. The KGB officer had an idea he was talking his way towards; what could it be?

'Yes, friendly. Your friend, Doctor Kuznetz, now – an entirely different matter. Entirely different.' Zelinski tapped his temple underneath it's bandage. 'I got to know what the aliens know, you see. And I see that he isn't human. They recognised that straightaway.'

'D'you know what these Night Children are up to, if you know what they knew?' asked John.

The other man made a face and shrugged.

'Smiple enough: they want to possess the Earth. Human beings will exist only as herds of mindless cattle once enough Cadaverites have been created.'

'Great. Very neighbourly. Just what we might expect from them. And in the short term?'

Zelinski laughed shortly.

'The ones trapped outside the mine when the roof collapsed are desperate. They aren't being allowed back into the cavern. If they stay in Trevilho they'll die. There aren't enough of them to try and force the cordon. Besides, the troops on the cordon are ready and waiting for any escape attempts, and they've been using infra-red lights in darkness to illuminate the landscape. The Children don't like infra-red. It isn't fatal, just extremely painful to them. So, they're trying to hide in Trevilho, in places that are out of the sun. Tonight will be bad for them and the citizens. Enough about the oupirs. Back to your friend.'

There was no response from John, who merely sat and stared.

'Not human. An alien. Another alien, I ought to say. What's his agenda, Izvestilnyuk? What brought him here and why does he stay? For that matter, how did he get in? You see, I have lots of questions about Doctor Kuznetz.'

Well you're not going to get answers about him from me, said John silently. Zelinski lapsed into silence as well, brooding whilst staring at his feet.

'Did they search you?' he suddenly asked. 'Before bringing you in here?' he lowered his voice conspiratorially. 'Come on, it's important.'

'Not properly, no,' said John. 'But I already told you I don't have any cigarettes.'

The other man made a dismissive gesture.

'Never mind smoking! What have you got in your pockets?'

A miscellany of items: rivets and screws and washers left over from fixing the ultra-violet light to the bulldozer, a couple of silver 7.65 bullets, a comb, a paperclip, a scattering of loose change. The KGB officer looked keenly at the collection, twirling a pen of his own in one hand.

'Let me see,' he said, reaching out to heft the bullets. Handing them back, he dropped one by accident.

John stooped to pick it up and felt a stunning impact across his neck as Zelinski struck out with a karate blow; the floor rushed up to hit his cheek and he passed out.

When a dazed state of consciousness returned, after who knew how long, John immediately understood: Zelinski had escaped. The cell door swung open and outward, bits of pen and rivet projecting from the lock.

'Forgiving chap, not killing me,' muttered John to himself. He got up, gingerly feeling his bruised cheek and bruised neck. The drunken guard still sat slumped on his stool, as before, except that his shotgun had vanished.

A sore and crestfallen John tracked the Doctor to the town square to report Zelinski missing. Semyon and Misha were in attendance, working away with carpentry tools on a dismounted telephone pole. Masha and Irina sat nearby, helping family members to peel insulation from long lengths of cable at precisely marked intervals.

'Make a cut at the chalk marks first, otherwise you'll rub the mark off. That's it, like skinning a rabbit,' said Masha in a conversational tone. She cocked an eye at the dishevelled figure of John lurching past.

'Drunk, the silly man,' she hissed to Irina, who giggled behind her hand.

'I wish I was,' muttered John. 'Er – Doctor? Bad news.'

He explained about Zelinksi's escape, then about what he'd learnt from the man.

'Interesting. You know, I think he could have escaped from that cell at any time. Why choose that particular moment?' A second of horrid inspiration struck and he snapped his fingers. 'John, you didn't mention the shield, did you?'

'What shield? And what's going on here?'

'Oh, of course, you'd gone before the demonstration. Yes, a shield. An electromagnetic force-field. Given the power restrictions the largest area we can protect is the town square. Those cables will be interlaced to form a grid, which will be propped up on the telephone poles.'

This appeared to be interference with time on a large scale to John, and he said so. The Doctor's look in return had an element of bleakness to it.

'I've already interrupted the flow of time, John. Back at the mine. If I hadn't been present then the roof would not have fallen in and the Cadaverites would not be protected.'

'And those people would be dead.'

'Another interruption.'

'Look, can't we just get back in your police box and leave here? Or go back further into the past and stop things going wrong?'

'I can't leave without correcting the effects of my interference, John. And I intend to try saving at least a few of the people here, if at all possible. As for returning in time for two bites at the cherry, the Blimovich Limitation Effect puts paid to that idea.'

He explained the law of overlapping temporal exclusivity, putting it as simply as possible. John looked stricken.

'Don't worry, young man. I have a plan, willing helpers and nearly thirty six hours to solve all our problems. Things are looking better already!'

A dubious John left to help Kopensky's workers with the excavation of the TARDIS.

Chairman Grechko met General Filipov at the former's dacha, an isolated spot well away from prying eyes and ears, where the staff were all vetted for discretion and loyalty, and where wild parties could be held without any embrassing attendant publicity. The Chairman's wife and daughter were still at the official residence in Moscow, rather than out here; it made for less distraction in this crisis. The General had come alone, in his staff car, and out of uniform, all of which betokened disturbing news.

Grechko ushered the general into the lounge, heavy with the smell of Cuban cigars and rum. He turned on a small table lamp and sat expectantly behind the desk, arranging his dressing-gown.

'I expected a report before this, Sasha,' he remarked, mildly. 'I hope there is a good reason for the delay.'

General Filipov knew very well the consequences of keeping the information he had from other members of the Politburo and most especially Comrade Brezhnev; a serious fall from grace, demotion and imprisonment were all possibilities. Reassuring himself with the prospects of promotion and honours, if his supplying Grechko alone with priviledged information bore fruit, the officer began.

'My agent in Trevilho's not been able to find a secure location to transmit from until now.'

Grechko nodded brusquely, wanting the conversation to move on.

'I'm not sure how to put the next news, sir. Colonel Stefan commandeered a helicopter and used it to get into Trevilho by parachute, with a radio, which he used to inform us that he'd resigned his commission and was awaiting subsequent destruction. He stated that he, too, had been under the influence of one the creatures.'

A silent expression of incredulity from the Chairman was the only response to this news.

'The citizens are trying to fortify buildings, seek out the oupirs, and he kept having to move. He says – well, order seems to have broken down. Drunkeness, fighting, looting, he's seen all that and it appears to be getting worse.'

Grechko held up a forefinger for quiet.

' "Fortify" – against what? Did he say?'

'He implied against attack from these creatures, Chairman.'

'He really doesn't know the town is going to be destroyed?'

Filipov shook his head. The GRU officer had a watching brief, to provide information from within the town. One thing he did not have was information about the nuclear attack due shortly, nor that he would be one of the victims. Moscow Centre simply couldn't allow the possibility of him coming into contact with the monsters and being allowed to leave the doomed town. A necessary sacrifice.

'At least two dozen MVD soldiers have deserted and are living in the zone between Trevilho and the Red Army cordon. Three have been shot dead trying to escape in the past twenty-four hours. My agent thinks they are getting desperate and running out of food or water.'

The Chairman waved a dismissive hand. He didn't care about MVD deserters, not one iota. As traitors they deserved to be shot.

'There is more, sir. The person you mentioned as "The Doctor" is one of the driving forces behind what organisation remains in the town, together with the mysterious Ivan Izvestilniuk. Both of them suddenly appeared four days ago, not telling anyone how they arrived, and promptly got involved with the siege. There is a discrepancy between your description of The Doctor and my agent's, however.'

The Chairman visibly stiffened in his chair, taking a much closer interest. Filipov felt even more under trial.

'You described a small man with dark hair; my agent describes a tall man with white hair. I don't quite - '

'Never mind that, get on with it!'

'Sir. Here is the most startling information of all. My agent got into the town hall and witnessed a demonstration by The Doctor of an electromagnetic shield device which he had constructed himself. A small scale model of the town was protected by an impenetrable barrier, which resisted attack by sledgehammer and shotgun.'

'Oh?' whispered Grechko, leaning forward, very interested indeed.

'Yes, sir. And the plan formed by The Doctor is to build a large-scale replica to protect the town itself.'

Wordlessly, Grechko's eyes glittered with a sudden cascade of ideas for several long minutes as Filipov anxiously waited. Finally the Chairman spoke, with deliberation.

'Regardless of appearance it must be the same man – person - being. Sasha, Sasha – just think what a shield like that could do for the defence of the USSR! Why – we'd be invulnerable to American missiles – American bombers – Chinese missiles.'

Not to mention the kudos accorded to the man who uncovered or discovered such a device, thought Filipov to himself.

The Chairman drew himself upright, in a composed manner. The general could guess what was coming.

'General – we must have that shield! The future interests of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics demands it.'

Stoney-faced, the general looked at Chairman Grechko.

'And what do we do with it once we have it, Comrade Chairman?'

'What do you mean – oh, I see – yes, better make sure this Doctor Kuznetz comes along too, to ensure it works correctly. While they're about it, the men you send need to get hold of that rascal Stefan, too. As if he can resign his commission on a whim!'

"Doctor Ivan Kuznetz" stood back and looked at the scale drawing he'd managed to sketch earlier, depicting Trevilho, centered around the town square.

Really, he'd managed to make a complete mess of the situation here. His abhorrence of violence and evil had led to a transgression of the laws of time at the mine, and – as if that wasn't enough – he intended to commit a still greater transgression. Much more of this and resultant distortions in time meant the Time Lords would detect his meddling. That would be disastrous; the interfering Gallifreyans would carry out a retrotemporal sweep and eliminate everything positive he'd achieved. What he needed was a very large rabbit produced from an even larger hat.

The electro-magnetic shield played the rabbit's part. The scale drawing in front of him showed where cobbles from the square needed to be removed, allowing telephone poles to be stepped into the resulting hole. The cable grid would then sit on the poles. The aerials needed to be modified, and the parabolic receptors installed, and general feedback circuitry gimmicked together from a miscellany of broken radio parts; and the power needed to be fed in from the town's main supply. Merely a matter of schedule, the Time Lord told himself, with good reason. Plenty of time, actually.

Yawning mightily, he perched precariously on a stool and aimed to get forty winks. The Cadaverites might yet have a trick or two to play and he wanted to be fit to face them.

The families now a permanent fixture in the town square set to with gusto, using brute force, tin shears, pliers and hacksaws to alter Yagi aerials into the bizarre, hedgehog-like forms the Doctor had sketched for guidance.

Avtandil moved amongst them, tugging his moustache ferociously, involuntarily scaring the younger children, offering practical help that was frequently rejected. Feeling unloved and unwanted, the victim of his frankly fierce Georgian appearance, he drifted off to the east of the town, eventually discovering a line of men at the entrance to Baikalskaya Prospekt. They were passing rubble down the line, hand to hand, from further down the street.

It's not very academic, nor intellectual, thought the miner to himself. It _is_ activity, which is one way of occupying the mind, and if that stranger Kuznetz is correct – my mind needs occupying.

'Need any help?' he asked the last man in the line, who barely spared a glance.

'Get lost, darkie,' replied the man, sweating and streaked with dust, hefting a long piece of broken beam. 'Don't need any monkeys here.'

Used to this unpleasant Russian attitude, Avtandil prepared to leave, feeling humiliated and with his cheeks burning like coals, until the man laughed to his friend.

The next Avtandil knew he faced the ignorant one, hissing in anger, and a brawl started as the man and three others replied with fists and boots. There would have been deaths and bodies had the Georgian retained the knife he lent to Masha. As it was, he felt a terrific slap to his head (courtesy, he later discovered, of a piece of roof girder) that went straight to his knees, and a boot caught his cheek, making him bite his tongue.

A roar of incoherent rage split the air and one of the attackers went head over heels, twirling balletically above a surprised Avtandil. Another received a stunning blow to the head from a shovel blade, dropping on the spot. The other two ran for it, pursued by a torrent of strange insults.

Avtandil levered himself up off the ground. Typical of him, letting his temper get the better of his sense, picking a fight with fifty Russians. Big hands steadied his ascent to stand upright.

'Are you okay?' asked a familiar voice. Ah, it was that big stranger, the – Ukranian, wasn't he? Izvestilniuk. Perhaps he disliked Russians, too.

A hissing sound came to Avtandil's ears. The Ukranian spun the spade like a baton, making it whistle.

'Keep shifting that rubble! The next squabble like this I come across will end with a burial!'

Izvestilniuk might be big but several of the excavation detail dwarfed him, quite apart from there being several dozen of them. His sheer rage, made concrete in the whirling spade, persuaded them that disobedience was a bad idea.

'You and your spade, eh,' commented Avtandil. 'My heroes.' He stopped abruptly and retched painfully.

'Here, come round the corner. Sit on the kerb. That's it, get some air in those lungs.'

Avtandil looked at Izvestilniuk. No, he didn't look Ukranian. He didn't speak like a Ukranian. He didn't speak like a Russian, either, with all those strange curses.

'You're not from round here, are you?' he guessed, making the other man blink with surprise.

'Er – not sure what you mean.'

Avtandil groped in a pocket for a cigarette, found it, discovered his matches and lit the cigarette. A few soothing puffs later and he cocked a canny eye at his rescuer.

'I never met a Russian yet who would step in to stop his fellow socialist Bolshevik countrymen from beating the bones out of a Georgian. Oh, maybe a militiaman might, that's their job. Nobody else would. Not like that. You must have made those two candidates for the sanitarium.'

Temper gone, the big man looked nearly embarassed.

'Yes. Well. My temper and all. Four against one. Not good odds. Cherish the underdog.'

The Georgian looked even harder at the Ukranian.

'You puzzle me, Izvestilniuk. Your slang is utterly unique. I never heard "toilet-paper" used as an insult before. And now this stuff about the underdog.'

He rose on legs that felt much firmer now.

'I don't know where you really come from, friend. Not the USSR, at a bet. Yet you help us here, you and Kuznetz. You kill the monsters, rescue prisoners, help the townspeople. You are more of a help than our so-called government, who are obsessed with controlling our crisis by destroying the town.'

With night upon them, the workers deemed it unwise to continue shifting rubble from the great jumbled pile which lay on top of the TARDIS; footing was tricky on the smashed building in darkness and the vampires might return. Good progress had been made, sufficient for them to reckon on uncovering the "blue cuboid" next day.


	7. Chapter 7

**TWELVE**

A gentle shake of the shoulder woke the Doctor from a comfortable doze. Blinking awake, he saw the dark, warm features of Masha, holding a bowl of stew.

'From the communal cooking in the square,' she explained. 'Eat, you need to keep your strength up.' A big slice of black bread accompanied the stew. 'Also, I feel that there is trouble coming.'

'Children of the Night?'

Masha shook her head, then shrugged.

'No, or not simply them. Oh, I wish you never gave me second sight!' she complained, dragging a hand through her hair.

'It was always there,' explained the Doctor, gently. 'Circumstances only brought it out. I take it that you have six sisters, and six aunts?' He bit back an undiplomatic laugh at her startled response. Obvious, really, that she'd be the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.

Masha eyed him warily.

'A God-fearing person would make the sign of the cross before talking to you. You know things about people that they themselves have yet to discover!'

The Doctor gestured in embarassment. True, true; Jan Hus had told him pretty much the same thing five hundred years ago.

'There! Helicopters. What did I tell you? Trouble, come to visit,' declared Masha.

Indeed, the sound of rotors could be heard in the darkness, coming in from the south. The Doctor stopped breathing in order to hear better, pitching his head first to one side, then to the other.

'Three of them,' he muttered, barely aware of Masha listening at his elbow. With a few lanky strides he reached a window looking over the town square, threw it open and stopped dead in astonishment.

The formal array of trees, lamp-posts, cobbles and benches had given way to a serried array of erect telephone poles, chainsawed tree-stumps and an overlying large-scale network of cables, suspended from the telephone poles. Bright exposed metal glinted in the light of surviving lamps, metal exposed at the crux of cables in the giant grid over Trevilho's town square.

Impossible! Yet – it has been achieved. I was asleep for longer than I realised! he belaboured himself.

Outside, the rotor wash came and went with unpredictable rapidity.

'Stand ready!' called a voice in the square outside.

The Doctor, despite his disregard of military matters, realised that the helicopters could no longer land in the town square thanks to the telephone poles and cable network. As good a deterrent as anyone could have wished for. In fact, better than the anti-invasion hop-poles he'd helped with before the failure of Operation Sealion.

'If I'm here, then you must be at risk, wouldn't you say?' asked a nervous Masha. Outside, the noise of helicopter rotors sank to a lower level as their pilots looked for and found level landing ground.

The Doctor looked out of the window apprehensively. Yes, he was at risk. So were several tens of millions of human beings at the moment.

'So are the people in those helicopters, whoever they are. What can they be doing?'

Suiting action to words, he dashed downstairs to the town hall steps, just before a surprisingly sober-looking Colonel Stefan also put in an appearance.

'Nobody called me to inform or approve this,' frowned the officer. 'Devil take them, what are they playing at!'

Masha came panting up behind them, pointing breathlessly over at the far side of the square. A dozen paratroopers came pounding over the cobbles, led by a pistol-wielding Captain, heading directly for the town hall.

'Quick. Must have rappelled down,' grunted Stefan, discreetly hiding his pistol. Three helicopters?

Captain Bezobrazhov had indeed rapelled down from the hovering Mil-8 helicopter with his men, sticking to the instructions delivered from Chairman Grechko personally – the helicopters not to land except to take on the prisoners, minimal contact with the townsfolk, who could be considered hostile, shoot to kill on sight if any "unidentified hostiles" appeared. The Chairman told him that the unidentified hostiles would be immediately obvious if they turned up.

The Captain was as ruthless and brutal as Colonel Stefan, but with a lot less imagination and ability – two reasons he was still a Captain. He displayed one talent above all others – blind obedience to orders, which dictated that the deserter Stefan and the spy codenamed "The Doctor" be detained and brought back to secure cells at Chkalevsky.

The first problem encountered in his mission were the obstructions in Trevilho's town square, which prevented the helicopters from landing there. Ideally he wanted two infantry sections protecting a third, which would capture the targets, all over and done in less than a minute.

Instead of which the twelve man team were rappelled to the debris zone outlying Trevilho, the two other helicopters remaining on patrol, making giant figure-of-eights, machine-guns pointing from open doorways. Instructions were that they remained as cover at one hundred and five hundred metres. The overflight and patrolling activity inevitably warned everyone that soldiers were due, making the Captain insist on speed if they had forfeited surprise.

His first thought on arriving in the town square was how crowded it was; people clustered everywhere, cooking, drinking, playing a mournful balalaika; a ragged khaki tent over to one side, a very battered BTR in the middle, and everywhere wooden poles erected to hold up a giant net of cabling.

'Town hall at the double,' he called over his shoulder, having to skirt civilians.

That led to the second problem. Normally Russian civilians would keep out of the way of the military, most especially a section of paratroopers on a special mission. Not these civilians. No, these insolent civilians remained stolidly in place, forcing the Captain to weave about them, losing more time. Hostile glances were directed at him and nearly everyone seemed to be armed, with shotguns and hunting rifles, or AK47's and old sub-machine guns. Another reason for avoiding conflict if possible.

Luck shone briefly upon him when the section went loping up the town hall steps. Colonel Stefan stood there, alongside a tall white-haired stranger who fitted the description of The Doctor.

'These men are under arrest!' shouted Captain Bezobrazhov, levelling his pistol at the two men, who seemed to be surprised by the speed of his actions. A woman loitering in the background was warned off with the waggle of gun-barrels.

'Aha. Bezobrazhov. They couldn't find anyone smarter? I'm almost offended,' snorted Colonel Stefan, before Bezobrazhov struck him smartly over the temple with his gun-butt.

'Stop that!' snapped The Doctor, receiving only a cold glare from the captain. Grechko had been insistent that The Doctor must not be harmed, at all, which kept his insolent skin intact for the moment.

'What on earth are you playing at, man!' asked The Doctor, failing to get any reply. He glanced over the square and realised that the lone spy left in Trevilho must have despatched news of the shield under construction.

'Of course! They want the shield!' he exclaimed, making Stefan look anew at the construction in front of them.

The woman skulking behind the prisoners darted off to the far end of the steps, then went down them at a rate of knots, heading straight for the clusters of people in the square, who were looking at the section with a great deal of dislike, bordering on hate. Bezobrazhov reckoned on two hundred people at least, many carrying firearms. They had to get out of there quick. Damn that obstructing net and it's preventing the helicopters from landing here!

A corporal quickly cuffed both prisoner's hands behind their backs, and they were marched back to the square, Bezobrazhov deciding to skirt the clusters of people there rather than risk going through them. Already, thanks to that bitch getting amongst them, they were starting to move. The soldiers moved to the left of the square, angling for the exit there.

'You haven't left helicopters on the ground, have you!' barked Stefan, appalled at the prospect of the Children of the Night getting their talons onto aircraft.

'Of course not, you traitorous buffoon,' replied Bezobrazhov, raising his pistol for another blow. Before the blow could fall a cobblestone, thrown with accuracy and considerable emotion, hit him on the elbow. He dropped the Tokarev in pain and surprise.

There might well have been a gun battle then, where none of the intruding soldiers survived against the aggreived citizenry of Trevilho.

'Stop!' shouted the Doctor. 'Please! No more killing!'

Nobody else could have kept the vengeful townspeople of Trevilho at bay and even so, several well-aimed cobblestones hit the paratroopers, who wisely refrained from retaliation. Gradually the section and prisoners moved out, away from the bright lights of the town square and into the darker, ill-lit, shattered fields of broken houses and destroyed streets.

'Ha. So much for a pursuit,' commented one of the paratroopers. 'Cowards.'

'Hardly so,' murmured the Doctor. That the citizens of Trevilho were reluctant to travel into the parts of town where Cadaverites might lurk made sound sense to him. Not that such information made an impression upon Bezobrazhov. Both the Doctor and Stefan tried to warn him about the Cadaverites, to no avail; he merely threatened them with a beating, applied with bare fists since he had lost his pistol. No, he wasn't about to believe any exotic threat slinking along the streets of Trevilho.

Nor was that all they had to prevail against. Snow began to fall upon them as they trotted toward the rendezvous, thin and ethereal swirls at first. Over the span of a minute the flakes became thicker and more numerous.

Bezobrazhov found the wind and snow playing tricks on his senses. The helicopters overhead wandered in and out of hearing, and perspective in the dark and wind-blown snow wasn't to be trusted.

The section stumbled into a clearing, actually the flagged quadrangle of an old Tsarist building that had been dynamited long days before. This spot had been chosen for their rendezvous by Bezobrazhov after the rope descent into town; it was open, obvious in the darker landscape of blasted buildings and easily reached. He gestured to the radioman.

'Hello Swan Three, this is Cygnet. Return for landing and pickup, return for landing and pickup.' An undecipherable crackle came from the radio in acknowledgement.

Almost immediately things began to go badly wrong. The Captain saw vague bobbing white shapes on the periphery of the ruined buildings nearby. His first thought – soldiers in camouflage snowsuits – was rapidly dismissed by the unsettling movement of the – figures.

The traitor Stefan hissed a message to The Doctor, who continued with his ridiculous warnings about monsters.

Are these the unidentified hostiles? wondered Bezobrazhov. If they were, their attention seemed to be focussed on the skies.

The sound of rotor blades became abruptly louder, far louder than they ought to be. One of the Mi-8's came lurching downwards, it's piloting erratic to the point of dangerous. Overhead the lights of a second came into view as it, too, began to descend rapidly. Swan One and Swan Two, he recognised their numbers on the fuselage.

'What are they doing!' shouted Bezobrazhov. 'Tell them to regain height and stay up. Warn Swan Three away. Quickly, man!'

Frantic calling into his handset by the radioman didn't cause any change in the helicopter's descent. More rotor wash came and went to one side as Swan Three took avoiding action in a long diversionary loop.

The Doctor had felt obliged to call frantically to the armed citizens closing in on the soldiers, preventing any killing that would, he felt certain, have resulted from any attempt to free him. Now, trapped between armed soldiers and amidst a collection of the Cadaverites, he felt despair: to be removed from the town now! Disaster loomed, not least because the Cadaverites would kill him on sight.

Yet the monsters remained reluctant to close on the soldiers, perhaps fearing silver bullets.

No! realised the Doctor, in a flash of intuition. They were straining their combined mental faculties in order to bring the helicopters down to land, where they could be seized and the crews either used for food or converts. Or chauffeurs. A grim picture of the Children spreading to a major town thanks to having air transport flashed through his mind, bringing the realisation that he must act – now!

An athletic locked-ankle hop that nearly brought his knees into contact with his chin allowed him to bring his hands up in front of him. Then he grabbed the sonic screwdriver from a pocket, fumbled it to an ultra-sonic setting and sent a blast of energy sweeping across part of the ruins in a great arc. Cadaverite figures writhed and shrieked in pain as they were hit by the sonic beam, completely breaking their hold on the helicopter pilots.

Swan One's wheels were nearly on the ground when the pilot suddenly regained his senses, shook his head in fear and alarm and realised what he'd been about to do. The big machine began to rise again.

Aware that there were other Children on the other side of the quadrangle, the Doctor turned to inflict sonic torture on them, too, only for Bezobrazhov to grab his hands and attempt to wrestle the sonic screwdriver from him.

'You idiot! I'm trying to help!' shouted the Doctor, unable to apply an akido hold or throw, thanks to both hands being cuffed whilst simultaneously trying to aim the screwdriver.

Bezobrazhov gave a lound grunt of pain and surprise, falling heavily to the ground, the victim of a viciously-applied kick in the kidneys from Colonel Stefan, who dragged the Doctor backwards.

'Run!' he shouted, pointing upwards.

The reason for his fear became apparent within seconds; Swan Two still came down, far too fast, and Swan One slowly rose up with an air of unavoidable fate.

The two helicopters collided heavily, pitching forward, Swan One shedding rotor blades like giant leaves. Locked together, they fell like stones, fifty metres, exploding on impact with the ground.

Stefan knocked the Doctor to the ground as the aircraft crashed, and the Time Lord felt a jarring shock, then a gust of hot air sweep over him. Bits and pieces of machinery clattered down around them, including a metre-long piece of rotor that stuck in the icy ground at an angle, quivering.

Apalled at the destruction, the Doctor stood up and completed his sonic sweep of the quadrangle's other side. Once again a writhing mass of Cadaverites fled in panic at the sonic bludgeoning.

Bezobrazhov, clutching an AK47, strode up to the two men, beside himself with rage.

'What did you do!' he snarled, literally snarled, like a dog, the rifle levelled at both of them in turn. Stefan's life hung in the balance.

'I tried to stop those creatures from controlling your helicopter crews. They'll be back in a few minutes, once the sonic beam wears off. Unless you have silver ammunition you won't stop them,' declared the Doctor in a matter-of-fact tone.

'Creatures? Creatures? Those people in white?' shouted Bezobrazhov, who then realised he must have just been the victim of the "unidentified hostiles". His command had just lost twenty four paratroopers in the destroyed helicopters, plus four crewmen, and two men amongst his own twelve were injured by the explosion and debris, one seriously. From having thirty six effectives, his force was down to eleven. Marshall Grechko would not be happy. And they hadn't even got the prisoners off the ground yet!

He looked silently at the crashed helicopters, smashed together, burning fiercely, ammunition periodically cooking-off from within.

'Call Swan Three in, right now', he informed the radioman, a slight wobble detectable in his voice. ''Form a circle around the prisoners. Shoot at any movement.'

'Captain, you must _not_ take me from here. I have important work to do!' protested the Doctor.

'Shut up!' shouted Bezobrazhov, visibly sweating. Colonel Stefan discreetly tugged the Doctor's sleeve and shook his head slightly. The senior officer recognised a man in the grip of fear.

'Where is Swan Three! Tell them to hurry up!' the captain shouted at his radioman. Fortunately for his state of mind the sound of helicopter rotors and the beam of aviation lights pierced the night seconds later. The pilot brought the machine down quickly, making the wheels bounce on the snowy quadrangle flags. Both prisoners were hustled into the aircraft, and handcuffed into a pair of bucket seats towards the rear, then roped in even more securely.

'Take off! Take off now!' shouted Bezobrazov into the cockpit. He looked ill, pale and sweating in the dim light thrown by the interior lights. Slowly the Mi-8 rose into the air, and it looked as if they might get away unscathed.

It was not to be. The helicopter had risen six or seven metres clear of the ground when a white blur shot across the ruins below, darting up a partially-burnt timber beam that allowed it to jump and catch the port wheel struts. Those aboard the Mi-8 felt it rock with the impact.

'That's one of those things!' shouted Bezobrazhov. The Doctor knew that instantly, closed his eyes and tried to project a mental barrier around the soldiers, keeping the Cadaverite's power at bay. He could manage it, just, and for a short time only.

'You need silver bullets, Captain,' shouted Colonel Stefan. 'There's a gun in my pocket – it's loaded with – LOOK OUT!'

In a lithe swing, the Cadaverite came in through the partly-open cargo door, talons reaching out to throw one paratrooper bodily from the helicopter. Several paratroopers managed to bring their weapons to bear, not an easy feat inside the swaying aircraft, and loosed off several bursts at the creature, which fell down. Holes appeared in the cargo door from misses.

'It's not dead!' warned Colonel Stefan. Bezobrazhov, white-faced and trembling, ignored him and motioned to two men.

'Throw it out. Go on – get rid of it!'

Once the paratroopers laid hold of the bone-white creature, it came to life again, moving faster than the eye could see, talons ripping at the unsuspecting soldier's throats, leaving their corpses gushing blood at it's feet.

Bezobrazhov yelled wordless abuse at the creature and emptied his magazine at it, from a distance of less than a metre. The force of the bullets knocked the Cadaverite off it's feet and against the bulkhead, but they didn't kill it. They did, however, penetrate into the cockpit and kill the pilot, ricocheting aroud to injure the co-pilot and damage the flight electronics, too. The machine suddenly lurched forwards, out of control, throwing all the soldiers forward into a giant pile of limbs against the cockpit bulkhead; one man, screaming madly, fell out of the cargo door. Hideous slashing and ripping sounds came from the tangled soldiers as the Cadaverite carried out its relentless slaughter, not in the least bothered by being riddled by gunfire. Only the Doctor and Colonel Stefan remained upright, tied into their seats, unable to move.

Perhaps the alien intended to take control of the aircraft and fly it over the military cordon below, or perhaps it merely intended to kill humans. At any rate, it dragged itself from the paratroopers, getting ready to dive into the cockpit, when fate caught up with it, too.

The Mi-8 hit the ground with a force that shattered its rotors, buckled the landing gear and crushed the cockpit. The shock transmitted through the airframe jarred both prisoners in their seats, Stefan losing consciousness for seconds.

The Doctor remained awake, if bruised back and front due to his bonds. Ironically, the rope pinions meant he and the officer remained safe at the rear of the helicopter. The Cadaverite had been cut in two by the cockpit partition collpasing, even if none of the survivors could see.

They might be down and alive, but not for long. The helicopter's cargo space had collapsed inwards where the open door had been, allowing snow and earth to collect inside. The Doctor smelt fuel and realised they faced the danger of fire.

'Is anyone still alive there?' called Stefan to the paratroopers. A few muffled groans came from the men. 'Not all dead then. No thanks to that imbecile Bezobrazhov,' muttered the officer to the Doctor.

The helicopter gave a further lurch forwards, moving downwards at an angle for a second and producing a tremendous grating noise, then stopping.

'Can any of you help to get us free?' called Stefan. Hearing and seeing motion from the Doctor, he turned to look in puzzlement at the other man's writhing and contorting. 'Are you having a fit?' he asked, after witnessing the peculiar ritual for half a minute.

'No,' replied the Doctor, concentrating elsewhere. 'A trick or two Harry taught me.' The trick was to keep one's muscles under tension whilst being bound about with ropes, then relaxing to allow a degree of play in the bindings, which a prisoner could then use to wriggle free.

Again the helicopter lurched, grated and slid.

'What in the name of seven hells is happening to us!' called Stefan. 'And can anyone amongst you idle parasites help?'

'Oh no – I know what's happened,' exclaimed the Doctor. 'Talk about bad luck. This helicopter has come down right on the edge of an old tin mine working.'

On cue, the smell of fuel got stronger.

'Hey! Can anyone – oh, the devil take you all,' snarled Stefan. 'What unbelievable luck. Or lack of it.'

'Cheer up,' said the Doctor, still wriggling like a snake with dementia. 'We're still alive.'

'Hah!' replied Stefan, bitterly.

The helicopter lurched, slid forwards and then abruptly fell.

Colonel Proskurov read over the orders he'd scribbled down during the telephone call.

"One: select crews for one artillery piece – crew to be rated for maximum political reliability

Two: select two tractors

Three: select two guns

Four: to rendezvous at ref. PK451 with escort vehicle

Five: to proceed to within 15km ref. DN3034

Six: to deploy on orientation of 280 deg. One gun only

Seven: to await courier with special instructions

Eight: to maintain total radio silence at all times"

The ninth item he didn't write down, not wanting any evidence lying about for careless eyes to see.

None of it made a great deal of sense. The unit he commanded was a towed regiment of heavy artillery, the S-23 180mm gun. They were constituted under North-Western Front command, and ought to be operated as a complete unit, twenty four guns. Not two, sent off on their own to the devil only knew where with only enough crew to operate one gun. PK451 was simply a milestone on the highway, a clearing in the middle of virgin forest a hundred kilometres from anywhere, used several times in exercises for a rendezvous. The other place he didn't know and would need to look up, which would mean unlocking the safe containing the highly sensitive and accurate maps. Why only a single crew for the guns? If you had two guns – at which point a slight insight took hold. Two guns in case of damage or malfunction to one of them. Redundancy. "Maximum political reliability" meant using the most loyal Communist Party members, men who could (and the Colonel didn't count himself amongst them) shoot their own mothers if the orders came to do so. "Escort vehicle" – another puzzle. This was the Soviet Union, not Indochina, you didn't need an escort to prevent attacks or ambushes up here. Nor did orders arrive by courier – that was slow and inefficient in twentieth-century warfare. You used radio instead, except not today, apparently.

It smelt, decided Colonel Proskurov. It smelt of something potentially rather nasty, which Higher Authorities didn't want any evidence of, certainly nothing lying around that could incriminate them.

Then, there was the ninth item. "Remove from storage ten AAS1 fuses and keep secure about your person", from memory. Colonel Proskurov twirled a pencil and looked at the noticeboard of his office without really seeing it.

AAS1 fuse mechanisms were arming devices used in the S1 nuclear artillery round that the guns he commanded were able to fire. The actual nuclear rounds were kept in a very tightly guarded compound at Semipalatinsk; they were useless without the arming fuses, which were kept on-site here at Slapetsk. In another safe. Keeping the fuses about his person meant lugging them around in a foam-lined lockable container. A lot of fuss and bother. For what? This couldn't even masquerade as an exercise, not with only two guns and one crew being used.

The Colonel, if slightly cynical, was nevertheless a loyal and dutiful officer. So he sighed heavily and went to work. He rang the Political Officer.

'Hello? Aleksei? Listen, a special duty has come up. I want you to get me a list of your most highly-rated men, enough to make up a complete single gun crew. Plus a driver. No, don't embarrass me asking what it's for – I have no more idea than you, except that it involves serious equipment issues. Quickly as possible, please.'

Having done that, he went to his samovar, put a spoonful of jam in a glass cup and poured the tea onto it, sitting back to sip it slowly and ponder whither and why.

When John returned to the town square, he found a small community awash with rumour and speculation, centring on the abduction of Doctor Kuznetz and the Colonel by paratroopers. This did not go down well with him.

'Didn't any of you try to stop them!' he snapped, until told by Masha that the Doctor himself forbade any such thing, for fear of killing. Valentin, the ex-Army officer, led them very circumspectly to a large open space now frosted with wind-driven snow, where the burning wrecks of two helicopters lay glowing in the night, entwined together like lethal lovers.

The sight of the shattered, burnt and mangled wreckage made John feel weak at the knees; surely the Doctor hadn't been in one of those things!

Masha, one of the small group to accompany him, jogged his elbow.

'He's not dead. He's not here, either.'

'He got taken in the other helicopter,' pronounced a croupy voice from within a pile of rubble. Guns were pointed, just in case, but the person the voice belonged to turned out to be a small pensioner with a large white moustache, cradling a large rusty carving knife and a large shotgun. He emerged from the bricks and charcoal, dragging a small sack behind him, a sack that appeared to contain several football-sized objects.

'What do you mean?' asked John, looking sideways at the bag, which displayed unpleasant blood-like stains.

'The third helicopter. The one that didn't crash,' explained the old man, pointing illustratively at the skies. 'Them swines with machine-guns got him aboard it. That were after he gave the oupirs a good seeing-to with his magic stick.'

Which must mean the sonic screwdriver, interpreted John. The old man must have seen the Doctor.

'What happened after that?' asked Valentin, looking to all sides with a touch of fear.

The old man shrugged, giving a crafty smile.

'Why, I took the opportunity to count heads, I did. Oupir heads. And me being so bad at counting, I needed a keepsake to remind me – here, take a look - ' and he opened the neck of the sack. Masha, curious and not quick enough on the uptake, glimpsed inside and gave a small shriek. John remained aloof, knowing pretty well what was in there and that the knife's rusty stains were not rust after all.

A crestfallen trio returned to the town square, trying to remain upbeat about what had occurred, and failing to convince themselves.

John looked around him, seeing the carefully-prepared grid of cables, the adapted aerials, the improvised parabolic dishes, not knowing the first thing about how it all operated together. Only the Doctor knew that, and he was on his way to a meeting in Moscow with the high and mighty of the Soviet Union. Not of his own volition, but he might as well have been on the Moon for all the good he could do them. The night had worn on, dawn came soon and the town of Trevilho would last for only another twenty four hours. There was no escape.

Perhaps he'll find a way to communicate with us, reflected John. By phone, or radio. Tell us how to use the Tardis and the cable grid to avoid being destroyed by nuclear artillery.

'Things are not good, are they?' enquired Masha. Across the square, an accordion struck up an incongruously happy tune.

'Nope,' replied John. 'No, they are not. Still, I don't see how they can get any worse.'

Taking time to bolt a bowl of stew offered by townspeople gathered around one of the communal fires, he wandered westwards, declining a slice of black bread. Nasty stuff, not like proper British bread!

There the road lay, now concealed with drifting snows brought across by the winds. Fewer ruins disfigured this part of the town, where the monsters from the mine had less cause to attack and the defenders less reason to destroy.

Well, time spent in reconnaisance is seldom wasted, he recalled from the British Army training manual, and set off down the road, snow squeaking under his shoes. The night might be cloudy and moonless, yet the albedo of the snow-covered landscape allowed him to see the contours of the land as he passed from the town's border and into the virgin countryside. Pine trees stood out like sentries, wooden railings and fences marked fields, worn wooden roofs showed barns or hutments.

I can't believe we were trained to believe these people were a sinister threat to world civilization! John told himself. They can't even build a barn out of bricks. And this road is unpaved, he reminded himself, scuffing a heel along the unmetalled surface. His silent musing continued for ten minutes.

Several hundred yards ahead a collection of dark, mis-shapen forms congregated on the road, across the road and onto the snowy fields alongside the road. Occasional lights and flames were visible amongst the strange shapes. John slowed, until he understood that he was looking at an encampment; the townsfolk of Trevilho who had left the town itself and moved closer to the military cordon along the exit road. Denied escape, they were clinging close to the cordon as a means of escaping from the Cadaverites.

John continued forwards, keeping an eye open for any possible Cadaverite incursion. Not very likely here, since the mine lay on the far side of town, yet he needed to keep his senses keen.

Nobody challenged him or stopped him when he drew level with the makeshift tents and refuges of the escapees. Light cast from candles and torches within nearby tents threw the shadows of those within onto the walls in soft relief, making him realise that this impersonal collection of tents actually constituted a small township of people.

Moving on slowly, he saw the dark bulk of the roadblock clearly visible ahead. It lay across the road, a great black mass of indeterminate origin approximately two hundred metres distant. And most telling of all, scattered randomly where they had died, the bodies of – at a rough estimate – fifty people lay in the snow. They had died trying to get to or through the roadblock, singly or in groups.

Trying to get past the roadblock by moving off-road was a non-starter. The forest pines came sweeping down to within ten yards of the road, and even in the dim light of pre-dawn John could see barbed wire strung between the trunks.

Okay, the road or nothing. The cordon troops and their commanders must have realised how impossible it would be for any escape to take place away from the roadblock, and had backed it up. John could see beyond the barrier and the lumpy black silhouettes of tanks against the white snows, at least six of them.

'You aren't thinking of trying to get past them, are you, sonny?' asked a creaky voice behind him. John whirled round to see an elderly male citizen smoking a pipe and looking quizzically at him.

'Uh – no. No, just came to check what they have,' lied John.

'They got plenty, sonny, they got plenty. You want to chat about it? Step into my tent.' The senior citizen moved backwards and indicated a tall, triangular tent with open entrance flaps with the stem of his pipe. He ducked back inside and John followed him.

The old man closed the tent flaps and poked at a small fire in the middle of the tent.

'Keeps me warm,' he explained. The smoke darted and stung at John's eyes, making them weep initially.

'Yes,' he said, coughing lightly in the fume-filled tent. 'You mentioned the equipment those buggers at the roadblock are using. Tanks and such.'

The pensioner looked up in surprise from his dried fish, which he gnawed like a piece of gum.

'Ah no, now, see, that's where you're wrong. No tanks, no.'

John's spirits promptly soared; no tanks, no armoured protection, ergo an easy way out!

'No, they don't have tanks, they have a thing they call a "Shilka", half a dozen of them.'

John's spirits promptly fell. The Shilka was a Soviet anti-aircraft vehicle, carrying four cannon on a tank chassis, capable of firing fifty rounds a second. And each round could cut a person in two. And there were six Shilkas beyond the roadblock.

'Didn't expect that, did you?' commented the old man, shrewdly. 'No more did those who tried to get past. Cut down like wheat, they were.'

Shaking his head and sighing in dismay, John made his way back to Trevilho. Clearly the townsfolk couldn't get past the roadblock. Six armoured vehicles carrying four cannon apiece would simply obliterate any attempt to break out, not to mention any snipers or machine gun nests set up in the pines. And to judge by those fifty bodies out there in the snow, the soldiers manning the cordon and roadblock were quite prepared to kill anyone approaching, man, woman or child.

**THIRTEEN**

With a start of realisation, the Doctor pulled himself back to consciousness.

Where was he?

An air of the grave lay over everything. Cold, dank, loamy. There was no light, and a pervasive chemical stink tickled his nostrils. His face lay against a furry surface, cold and yielding. In the dark beyond him a prolonged groan came to his ears.

Of course! The helicopter – they had fallen forward, and downwards, until stopped by a terrific jolt.

Which, to judge by the freedom enjoyed by his arms, meant that his handcuffs had broken free.

The groaning was joined by a pattering sound, interspersed by the occasional dull rumble and banging.

'Colonel? Colonel Stefan, can you hear me?'

No answer came.

Testing the bounds of his freedom, the Doctor discovered that the grave-like smell came from being in close proximity to damp earth. He had managed to wriggle and contort free from the ropes that kept him in the bucket seat before Swan Three fell into the old mine workings, a drop of, oh, say fifty metres approximately. The drop must have broken his bucket seat's rivets and deposited him atop the heap of paratroopers lying against the cockpit bulkhead. Then, logically enough, since he had been handcuffed to the bucket seats restraints, his hands ought to be free.

And they were! He laid hold of the sonic screwdriver in his coat pocket and set it to "Illuminate" by touch alone.

The greenish glow laid an air of surrealism over the interior of the helicopter. The roof had fallen by a good metre, and the port side had given way to an intruding mass of earth and stone, explaining the smell. The cockpit bulkhead had been forced inwards partially, further reducing the area of the cargo compartment.

Colonel Stefan, still secured to his chair, blearily came back to normality as the Doctor pinched an earlobe and tweaked his little finger. Acupuncture points. The Doctor undid the rope and severed the cuffs.

'Eh? Lizaveta, leave me alone – oh. Oh. It's you, Doctor Kuznetz.'

'Yes, it's me, and we need to co-operate to get out of here, Colonel.'

The Spetznatz officer paused to sniff the air.

'We certainly do, Doctor. That's aviation fuel I can smell. One spark and our corpses won't leave enough behind to fill a matchbox.'

The Doctor reacted with considerable aplomb, in the circumstances.

'Colonel, we happen to be buried under a fall of earth in an abandoned mine working, in the middle of no-mans-land. Our escape plan needs to be implemented now. Now!'

Under the circumstances Colonel Stefan might be forgiven a natural impulse toward pessimism. Getting out of the crushed and mangled airframe of the Mi-8 would normally mean using equipment and tools guaranteed to create sparks due to metal-on-metal contact. With the Doctor's sonic screwdriver they were able to unseat, unscrew and unrivet panels to the outside environment entirely spark free. The process was accompanied by a constant chorus of rumbles and clattering; the sound of earth and rock continuiing to fall on the helicopter, interspersed with more worrying screeches as the helicopter's abused frame collapsed further inwards. With seconds to spare, the now filthy Doctor and Stefan wriggled out of the machine, into a small void along the starboard side. Stefan produced a compact steel torch and it's defiantly bright life illuminated a narrow space behind the helicopter, which now stood on it's nose, crushed inwards like an egg-box. Tons of earth lay beyond the smashed aircraft, blocking any exit.

'This way,' called the Colonel, wriggling as deftly as a snake along the rubble-strewn ground. The Doctor followed suit, anxious to clear the machine before the fuel ignited.

They crawled diligently until the narrow space widened and vaulted upwards, sufficiently high to allow them to stand upright. The passage led onwards for another ten metres, then stopped in a rockfall, where the unsupported mineshaft roof had collapsed.

'Dead end. Do we go back?' asked the Doctor.

'Certainly not!' snapped Stefan. 'We stay far away from the crash or risk being blown to bits.'

And, a hundred metres distant, the roof finally caved in completely upon the Mi-8, crushing hot engine parts together and into spilt fuel. A sudden bright burst of light lit up the tunnel like a flashbulb.

Both men were thrown to the ground as the blast and shockwave sped through the tunnel, it's force magnified by the confined space. A low rumble, followed by yet more quivering of the ground, heralded the roof's collapse onto the narrow crawlspace leading to the helicopter.

Colonel Stefan sat up, shaking dirt from his hair. His torch lay on the ground next to him, broken and useless. He sighed after trying to turn it on.

'My wife got me that torch.'

The Doctor exhibited considerably less fatalism.

'Don't sit down and start giving in. We're not dead yet. Not only that, I need to get back above ground to finish work on the shield, and I refuse to accept that we are stuck here.'

Stefan was struck by the intensity of the other man's voice. In the darkness neither man could see each other, yet the Doctor's determination almost allowed the officer to see the set of his jaw and clenched teeth.

'Your little magic wand doesn't dig its way through rock, does it, Kuznetz? Because our bare hands won't make a great impression.'

The Doctor pondered the idea for a minute. The sonic screwdriver would crack rock if he got the correct frequency, but not enough and not quickly, given the drain on it's power cell such use would entail.

'No, Colonel, it won't. For the present we are stuck here. I suggest we stay still to conserve what air there is.'

The still, dank air sat in the underground chamber like a third person, leading Colonel Stefan to think over his situation. He was doomed, condemned to expire like an unfortunate miner, gasping his last seconds away.

No! he decided. With the gun in his pocket he would at least depart this life like a soldier; a single bullet to the temple would suffice. Having made that decision, he began to wonder about the stranger sharing this earthen tomb with him. To have been present at Stalingrad, over twenty-five years ago, that was an achievement. The other reports delivered to him, giving an account of a Doctor Kuznetz at the storming of the Winter Palace – no, a mistake there, that had been over fifty years ago. This conjecture led on to others; what, exactly, was the magic-wand Kuznetz used? The principle seemed to be that of sound waves, focussed very narrowly. It must be a prototype device, the Colonel told himself, not very convincingly.

And the giant shield construction in Trevilho town square? he asked himself. Did that come under the title of "experimental prototype"? How did this man know so much about the oupirs, the Children of the Night, before he even encountered them? For that matter, how did he know that Moscow decided to use nuclear weapons to destroy the town?

The colonel wrestled with his imagination and curiosity until his patience gave out.

'Doctor. Doctor, can you hear me? I begin to think neither of us will get out of here alive. No, no, don't start to lecture me on hope and hopelessness, I know we are surely doomed. Now, given that, you can answer honestly questions I put to you.'

'Why should I?' replied the Doctor, intrigued at the flinty officer's sudden desire to know.

'Because whatever you tell me won't go any further.' A short laugh disturbed the chamber. 'It isn't as if I carry a radio with me, is it?'

'True enough,' admitted the other man. 'I am reluctant to tell you any truths for fear you won't believe them.'

Again the short, ironic laugh went up.

'Doctor, Doctor – yesterday – or was it the day before? – I had my mind taken over by a monster straight out of Russian folklore. I took it's body to be dissected and analysed at Chkaletsky. My idea of what "truth" now constitutes can be described as elastic.'

A mutual silence ran for seconds until the colonel spoke again.

'So, Doctor, you can answer me these questions: who are you and where do you come from?'

With a sigh, the Doctor explained: he, too, was an alien. Like the Cadaverites, he had been exiled here on Earth by his own people. Unlike the Cadaverites, he was benign.

'An alien? How can that be – you look so human! You are pulling my leg!' exclaimed the Colonel.

'Not at all, Colonel. For a start, my cardio-vascular system is profoundly different from yours, as is my cerebrum and cerebellum. Any detailed medical analysis would reveal differences. As for looking human, my fellow Time Lords didn't want me to stand out from the crowd. That would have been counter-productive; my exile was a punishment and a probation at the same time.'

'And Izvestilnyuk – he is an alien, too? That is why there is no trace of him?'

The Doctor coughed in slight embarassment.

'Er – no. No, he is human, just from – well, from the future. 1975, to be exact. And from Britain. Where he is an army officer,' he hurried on. The colonel drew in a hissing breath.

'A spy!' before he caught himself again. 'Who is helping the townspeople and who helped you and them get out of the mine. That doesn't make sense. And he is from the future!'

'He is the reason we both came here. You see, in the future he knew that Trevilho had been destroyed in 1969 by a nuclear attack, but not _why_. Being part of UNIT, he needed to find out.'

That led to a tangential discussion about UNIT. The Colonel eagerly drank in the Doctor's description of Lethbridge-Stewart's brainchild, formed after the Yeti incursion in London the year before, currently being stalled at the UN by Soviet suspicion and intransigence.

'Ha!' snorted the Colonel, punching one fist into the other. 'Those laggardly pen-pushers in the Kremlin will be queuing up to join after this little business, eh?'

'Indeed they will,' replied the Doctor, seeing that the Trevilho affair had indeed been the catalyst for Soviet agreement to the formation of UNIT.

'You say that you travelled backwards in time to get here. You can move around in time?'

'Yes,' replied the Doctor, not really wanting to give away more information than he had to. The colonel kept on.

'You have seen the future?'

'Colonel,' replied the Doctor with infinite patience, 'I have lived in the future.'

'And the past, too?'

'Yes. Which explains how I came to be present at the battle of Stalingrad.'

'Ah, yes, our world-famous victory. What it must have been to see it with ones own eyes!' and there came a note of triumph in the officer's voice.

'It was a ghastly attritional bloodbath, Colonel, I assure you, and your life is no poorer for not being there,' replied the Doctor in a tone of some annoyance.

'You're not a Russian or a Bolshevik, Doctor,' snapped the Colonel. 'You simply cannot understand.' He paused a moment before adding 'And if you dislike war so much, what were you doing there?'

Embarassed at being caught out, the Doctor harrumphed before responding.

'Yes, well – I have the besetting sin of curiosity. And a knack of getting into trouble.'

A silence lasted for whole minutes whilst the Colonel took stock of what he'd been told. The whole story was too ridiculous to believe, of course. Yet it explained everything, and what person in their right mind would concoct a tale so utterly fantastic when they had no reason to?

'Oh – surely, Doctor, surely you trying to preserve the town with a shield affects the future? Or doesn't it matter?'

'Oh, it matters alright,' said the Doctor, in a tone full of anguish. 'My rescuing the prisoners from the mine and collapsing the roof is a major disturbance in the normal fabric of time. The shield is part of a scheme to balance that.'

Actually part of the scheme remained a mere outline in his head, a plan he needed to fill in later on.

'Back in the square you said "they" wanted the shield. That would be a bad thing, would it? The Soviet Union able to protect itself from enemies?'

The officer's tone was ambiguous.

'Getting that shield would be a disaster!' retorted the Doctor with considerable heat. 'A technological leap of several centuries overnight is inevitably destablising. Not to mention the resultant disturbance in time would alert the Time Lords, who take a very dim view of such matters.'

There came that mention again, realised the colonel. "Time Lords", whoever they were. Aristocrats from the future?

'And what would they do, these Lords of Time? Destroy us all?'

'No,' replied the Doctor moodily. 'No, destruction is always a last resort for them. No, they would reassert the normal flow of events from a point before I arrived here, a retrotemporal sweep. None of this will happen, nobody gets to be saved, the Cadaverites all die in the nuclear attack just as the townspeople would.' He didn't add that he would also suffer severely for a serious infringement of the Laws of Time, possibly being re-exiled with a new body and parts of his memory missing. As a punishment it mattered rather less than the prospect of the lives he had saved being snuffed out like so many inconsequential candles.

The Colonel shook his head.

'This is all quite fantastic, you know.' A short pause later he added: 'But having battled monsters with mind powers, I am less skeptical than I was a week ago.'

The Doctor grinned, remembering similar a line from the Brigadier.

'Excellent, Colonel! We'll get you an open mind yet!'

Masha stood on the town hall steps and looked at the new dawn. No-one here might see another if The Doctor didn't return. She turned and went back to the meeting room outside the mayor's office, dodging a line of labourers carrying sandbags down into the basement.

Vassili brooded over a collection of sketched diagrams The Dockor had left lying on a table, tracing circuitry with a pencil. Avtandil, not interested in shifting rubble in the presence of hostile Russians, sat on a chair, watching Vassili.

'I can't make any sense of this,' he complained to the world at large. 'Half the symbols are invented. Plus this feed here – "temporal vector hysteresis inductor" – what the devil's that?' He looked up at Masha. 'Oh, our resident witch.' She gave him an exceedingly cross look. Evgeniy came over to clap a consoling hand on the other man's shoulders.

'Don't take it out on others. I know we're under a deadline here, so let's co-operate, not quarrel. Okay? Now, show me this mystery diagram.'

Minutes later Evgeniy, too, had to admit defeat over the drawings.

'I have a feeling we're not intended to know the details of how this works,' he told Vassili. 'In the sense that The Doctor is not – ahem – local.'

'I'm an electrical engineering graduate,' complained Vassili. 'And I'm not local, either. Why shouldn't -'

Evgeniy pointed a forefinger at the skies.

'Not that kind of local.' Vassili's eyebrows rose in surprise. Any comment remained unsaid as Kopensky and John came into the room, dirty and tired.

'Well, that's the big blue box uncovered,' announced Kopensky, exhausted after performing heroically in shifting rubble since before sun-up. 'And now I am going to lie down before falling down.' He left for the camp beds.

John slumped into a chair, less out of tiredness than despair at having lost the Doctor.

True, the TARDIS now stood proudly in a small clearing amidst a vast pile of rubble. Incredibly, the damn thing didn't suffer so much as a scratch after having a builing drop on it. How freaky was that! The Russians who uncovered the vehicle treated it with a certain awed respect, as befitting a flimsy wooden box able to survive being dynamited and buried in rubble.

All of which was for nought, if they didn't have the Doctor to open the doors and – and do whatever he planned to do.

Masha, standing and looking distractedly at the drawings, yawned hugely. She sat down in one of the padded chairs and her eyes slowly closed.

She deserves it, thought John. All last night she had remained awake, trying to determine what happened to the Doctor, where he was.

With a suddenness that made everyone jump, Masha sat bolt upright, her eyes flying open and a terrific gasp escaping from her suddenly open mouth.

'Holy Mother! Don't startle me like that!' exclaimed Vassili. 'My nerves are bad enough.'

Doctor Abakumov hurried over to Masha.

'Are you alright, dear?'

'Yes, yes! I saw him! The Doctor!' a statement that ensured all eyes turned to her.

'A dream,' scolded Abakumov, folding her arms sternly.

'No, not a dream. I – how can I put it? I saw what he saw, felt what he felt. Really, I did.'

She seemed both upset and excited, desperate to convince them that she experienced a real insight. Across the room Avtandil came to life, ambling over.

'What did you see?' he asked.

'Darkness. Darkness all around. It wasn't like the darkness of night, because that's over. Dark and cold. That's all I had time to notice.'

Paying more interest, John leant forward.

'Since you got hypnotised in the mine you seem to have developed a mental link with the Doctor. Could it be that you experience what he does?'

Avtandil tugged his moustache.

'Like a radio. You can receive his mental broadcasts. Can he get yours?'

Masha tried hard, eventually collapsing in defeat.

'No. I can't even get his thoughts now.'

Again Avtandil tugged at his moustache.

'Perhaps there's too much interference, if this thing is like radio.'

Masha brightened straight away.

'Yes! When I fell asleep it happened straight away. I need to fall asleep again, that gets rid of all the things around me that distract.' Her face fell a little. 'I'm too excited to sleep.'

'Doctor?' asked John of Abakumov, who looked scandalised.

'What! Give this woman a sedative! I will not!'

If matters had been left to John his temper would have inevitably scotched any hope of co-operation. Instead Avtandil swept in, sandwiching the doctor's hand between both of his, bowing and kissing her index finger.

'Most abjectly, I plead our case, Doctor.' An astonished (and secretly flattered) Abakumov mumbled an "okay" and gave Masha a small injection of pentothal.

'Enough to instil a hypnagogic state,' the doctor declared. 'But what you expect to get I surely don't know.'

In less than a minute Masha relaxed contentedly in the chair, her eyes fluttering under their lids.

'Masha? Masha, can you hear me?' asked John to a mumbled "yes". 'Okay, tell me what you can see, what you can hear and feel.'

Privately John dreaded being told that the Doctor was being held in a lightless cell underneath the Lubyanka.

'Dark. Darkness. No light at all. Damp. Earthy. Smells of earth.'

That puzzled the audience.

'Sounds like the mine,' commented Evgeniy. 'Except that's the last place on earth he'd be.'

'No sounds. Nothing moving. Wait. Wait. There is another person there. Another man. Stefan.'

This again was puzzling. Were they being held together? That made no sense – prisoners like them ought to be held seperately.

'The air is not good. Stale. Not enough of it.'

Torture by asphyxiation? wondered John. Evgeniy and Avtandil were even more baffled.

'What d'you think, Boss?' asked the Georgian. 'I think it sounds like a cave-in.'

'Yes,' agreed Evgeniy. 'Which makes no sense at all.'

Doctor Abakumov looked smugly satisfied, that is until one of the remaining MVD soldiers came in to report.

'Captain Kopensky is off-duty. You can report to me,' said Vassili.

'Yes, sir. We've spotted a crater out in the middle of no-man's land.' Vassili rolled his eyes. Did that really need to be brought to his attention?

'Whereabouts? Whereabouts is this mysterious hole in the ground?'

The MVD guard shrugged.

'Near one of the old mineshafts. Is - er - is that important?' he continued, wondering why all eyes suddenly turned to him, in a repeat of what Masha had experienced.

'There's no reason why the Doctor and Colonel Stefan should be stuck at the bottom of a crater out in the middle of a snowy wilderness. Who else finds this peculiar?' commented John.

Avtandil tugged each side of his moustache in turn.

'Two helicopters crashed last night. Why not a third?'

Within twenty minutes he and Evgeniy were poring over a set of old maps, which displayed the sites of old mine workings in red and black. The MVD soldier pointed out the crater, the best he could.

Evgeniy used a pencil to indicate.

'It looks as if the crater is at the site of a worked-out tin mine. For reasons I can only speculate, the helicopter crashed there. Presumably our comrades are trapped in the helicopter, unable to get free or escape.' His pencil followed a red line. 'This dotted line shows access from another shaft, parallel to this one with galleries branching off. Their over ground entrance is still accessible.'

He looked up to see John getting ready to leave.

'And where do you think you're going, Izvestilnyuk? You're not a miner. You don't have mining experience. This tine mine has been derelict a long, long time, meaning all sorts of difficulties. Plus, the smaller the better in this case. You can stay here and looking dashingly martial.'

Avtandil grinned a flashing grin, stroked his moustache in triumph and stalked off to get helmets, torches, picks and shovels.

John watched them depart with mixed feelings. After humping and dumping rubble for three hours, since well before the sun rose, he could do with a rest. Still, leaving others to rescue the Doctor didn't seem right.

To his left, a fearsomely loud noise rattled around the room. In less than ladylike fashion, Masha had fallen asleep, snoring heavily. John found a coat and covered her, then left to see what needed doing.

He paused at the sandbagged checkpoint in the foyer, looking out at a picturesque sky of pinks and golds and blues, matched by reflected light from the snowy lands beyond the town. Not much of a poet, it still touched him in a distant part of his heart.

'Got a smoke?' asked Zhadov, breaking the moment with typical bluntness. The surviving KGB officer looked haggard and bleary.

'Sorry - '

'Right, right, I forgot: you don't smoke. What were you staring at?'

'Eh? Was I? The landscape, I suppose. In about twenty four hours all this will cease to exist. What a shame. Where I come from - ' and John stopped before waxing darkly about Wigan. 'Shall I just say it's nothing like as unspoilt and natural.'

'Kiev, hey?' nodded Zhadov. 'Typical big city.' He scrounged a cigarette from a passing civilian and inhaled with relish.

'Ahhh. That's better. Oh, I saw those two dirt-diggers leave for one of the old tin mines, said they were trying to locate The Doctor.'

'Yeah. Right. They won't take me because I'm too large. Mines only accommodate midgets, it seems.'

Zhadov puffed away in silence for a while, then rubbed the ingrained dirt under his eyes.

'Those flying slime in the helicopters came to abduct him, from what I've heard.'

A silent nod was the only comment.

'Be careful and quiet if you do rescue him, then, because he'll be abducted again if that roving spy Stefan imported gets to see him.'

For several seconds John swore mightily, much to the Russian's amusement.

John paused to take in the other man's dirty clothes, the scratches and soot on his shaven pate, the well-used AK47 clutched in one hand.

'I've been sweeping,' explained Zhadov. 'Got three of the monsters. None of us killed. Not a bad morning.'

'Any sign of Zelinski?'

Zhadov spat on the floor.

'No. No, worse luck. If ever I get that whoreson in my sights I promise to slowly shoot him apart from the knees upward.'

'You'll have to join the queue,' said John moodily, provoking a harsh laugh. 'Be on the lookout for him, all joking aside. He can move around in daylight when the Night Children can't.'

Zhadov pursed his lips in momentary concentration.

'You're right. I'll pass the word on to the patrols. Not that we have that many out at present, thanks to daylight and silver bullets.' The departing agent gave John a slap on the back.

'I never thought much of Ukranians, friend, but you put them in a good light.'

His "Ukranian" friend had the grace to blush at the compliment.

'These Darlicks, then, they are the product of science without any – without any morality?' asked a bemused Colonel Stefan. The word "morals" did not often enter any conversations he had outside his home.

They had tried to move part of the previously collapsed roof, working at the top of the pile, to see if it were possible to get past it. Since more rock and earth fell to replace that which they removed, the answer remained "no". Now they were sat, backs to the recently collapsed tunnel leading to the Mi-8.

' "_Daleks_" ' , corrected the Doctor. 'And yes,' he agreed. 'Ruthless, remorseless, intelligent, amoral. In about a hundred years Earth will encounter them directly, much to the misery of the few who live to see them.'

Stefan's head spun. His conversation with The Doctor had led to discussion of alien races so monstrous they could only come from the imagination of a Strugatsky or Lem! Nor were the Daleks the worst. No, that had to be reserved for the Cybermen, metallic creatures adapted from living organisms. Humanoids, or in the case of planet Earth, humans.

The Doctors description of that bizarre episode in the Colonel's life where whole hours went missing last year began to fit together like pieces in a ghastly jigsaw: it had been a deliberate orchestration by the Cybermen to infiltrate human society.

'The Cybermen you described. They were once human, or like humans. Yet now they are "ruthless inhuman killers", to quote you.'

The silence in the increasingly stale air lent itself to the imagination, so much so that the Colonel felt The Doctor sigh in near-pain.

'Colonel, I am not an aggressive man, by no stretch of the imagination. I seek to resolve situations by peaceful means if at all possible. Violence is a last resort. Yet I will unhesitatingly seek to frustrate the Cybermen wherever I meet them. Some things, Colonel, some things must be fought unto the last breath in our bodies.'

Nobody who listened to that speech could have denied the emotional sincerity underlying it. Colonel Stefan felt his world suffer another blow. "The ends justifies the means" didn't ring quite as true now as it did yesterday.

'And does the Soviet Union survive into the future?' he asked, pensively.

'For another two decades, after which it starts to fall apart from the edges inwards,' said the Doctor, to the Colonel's wonder.

'Twenty years, hey. Time enough for me to salt some savings away for the coming of capitalism,' he half-joked. The silence took on a dissaproving tone. 'A Polish Pope. War in Afghanistan. Americans on the Moon. Americans, on the Moon – how can that be, when we were first into space?'

'The Earth has no political boundaries when seen from space, Colonel. Look on it as an achievement for all humanity.'

'Humanity! How can you talk about humanity – you, who aren't even human!'

'Certain qualities are entirely separate from physical form, Colonel. And consider the beam in your own eye before picking on the mote in anothers,' a Biblical reference lost on the avowedly atheistic officer.

Both lapsed into silence to help conserve air. The Doctor had calculated the duration of their survival, then understood that air was reaching them – either from behind them, where the helicopter lay, or ahead of them past the roof-fall. His estimate of their time left possessed too large a plus or minus factor to be reliable.

'I can hear sounds,' stated the Doctor. Stefan sat stock still, concerned that the roof might yet fall on top of them. Not that he intended to go out like that, not with bullets in his gun.

A sickly green glow lit up their miniature cavern as the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to illuminate the surroundings. Pattering noises were accompanied by the trickle of mud and stones from the top of the collapsed roof in front of them. Metallic clinks and scrapes came to their ears, followed by a cheerful call.

'Had enough holiday?'

'Is that Evgeniy?' answered the Doctor. 'Not before time, young man. What kept you!'

'Being a practical miner after being a paper-shuffler for too long,' answered the other man, pushing wooden planks under the newly-revealed roof. 'We had to go look for wood to prop this up. Another plank, Avtandil.'

Light from torches bobbed and swung on the far side of the narrow gap created, where crudely braced wooden planks prevented the roof from falling in again, planks held in place by props of dubious age and strength.

'Wide enough. Come on, Doctor – oh! Didn't see you there, Colonel. Want to come, too?'

'Less of the cheek,' grumbled the officer. Both he and the Doctor went clambering up the steep pile of rock and earth, squeezing under the boards with difficulty.

Once on the other side, Stefan stopped to take long, deep breaths of air, grateful at being released.

'Out we go,' ordered Evgeniy. 'Step lively, this whole excavation is unsafe.'

Despite having left Trevilho alone, the miners and those they had just rescued were met at the sagging boarded barrier of the mine entrance by what looked, to the Doctor, like a caravan on skis with an aeroplane propellor at the rear.

The driver, a man with a skin apparantly made of leather and walnut, opened the side door and peered out.

'Your man – the Ukranian – said you'd be needing a lift back. Got this out of storage specially for you.'

The aerosan made a speedy departure from the decrepit mine, engine roaring like a caged beast. It ran up to the edge of the town and slid onto the road, the noise increasing enormously.

Before stopping, the driver shouted back to his passengers. Nobody heard what he said, and he was only audible after the engine stopped.

'I said, the bald bloke with a gun, he put that stretcher in, and a blanket. He said to lie on it and cover your face. Damned if I know what he's been drinking.'

'Oho!' exclaimed Stefan. 'He wants us to pretend that you, Doctor, are dead. We can get you into the town hall under the blanket on the stretcher. Doing this will prevent that GRU agent from reporting back to HQ on your survival.'

Grumbling, and with only a modicum of good grace, the Doctor lay down on the canvas stretcher. The other three men and the driver took up the wooden carrying poles and hefted their "corpse" by several back streets to the town hall, avoiding the town square – too many witnesses by far, a lot of whom would feel impelled to look under the blanket.

The stretcher got carried, with much puffing and grunting, into the town hall. The impressive marbled staircase gave them some anxious moments, Stefan fearing that the angle they climbed at might dislodge The Doctor. Finally they reached the mayor's office and gratefully dropped the stretcher, a little too eagerly for their passenger's comfort.

'Ow!' exclaimed the Doctor, throwing the covering blanket off. 'No witnesses? Good.'

In both senses of the word: if people thought him dead, then they'd be liable to panic and desert the shield – which still wasn't ready for operation, not nearly. The margin for error had nearly vanished with his time wasted in the mine.

Vassili, when called in, nearly fell over in astonishment at seeing the supposedly-abducted and if not then probably-dead Doctor standing at the mayor's desk.

'Yes?' asked the Doctor, busy looking at a diagram. 'We still need enough cable to run from the shield to my large blue box, and from the town's power lines.'

Vassili waggled a metre-long piece of cable.

'That's what I came up here for. This is our total stock of cable. No more left, even though I was certain we had sufficient.' He narrowed both eyes and continued. 'And why would we need to connect that wooden lavatory to the shield?'

Predictably, the Doctor bristled.

'The TARDIS, sir, is not a toilet! It is - it is – let us just say that it is essential for the protection of people under the shield,' he finished, weakly.

'No more cable anywhere?' said Colonel Stefan, deciding that intelligent activity made more sense than drinking himself into oblivion. 'This is a mining town – surely there's stores of equipment around here.'

Avtandil tugged his moustache, looking sideways at Evgeniy.

'There's a whole lot of cable in storage up at the mine.'

'Then we need to get it,' stated the Doctor emphatically. 'There is no time to waste – being kidnapped and then buried has wasted far too long. I shall be hard-pressed to complete the work in time.'

'How are you going to get there?' asked Vassili, skin crawling at the thought of going near the mine and the monsters hiding there. 'That BTR won't get far on five wheels.'

'The aerosan again. It's fast if you don't mind being slightly deaf afterwards,' replied Stefan. He pointed at the Doctor. 'You are not to come. Stay here and work on your work, but you can't come to the mine. For one thing, you're supposed to be dead, and if you did get killed up there we'd be lost.'

'Very well,' grumbled the Doctor. 'But for heaven's sake be quick! Make sure you take John along with you – he's immune to the creature's influence.' Sadly, he displayed the hypnotic gadget so useful a couple of days ago, now broken in half and with it's mirror cracked and crazed.

'This is the Soviet Union, Doctor Kuznetz. You should know we don't appeal to the supernatural,' replied Stefan, stoney-faced.


	8. Chapter 8

**FIFTEEN**

Evgeniy and Avtandil sought out John, whom they found working on the BTR's turret from the outside. Valentin, the old army officer, was rattling and banging inside the turret. Curious children stood around looking intently at the activity. Finally the big machine gun slowly disappeared inside the turret, to be shoved out of a door by Valentin. John carried and laid it flat on the cobbles, taking charge of a long belt of ammunition that Valentin brought out.

'We desperately need cable,' began Evgeniy.

'So we're going up to the mine to get it,' finished Avtandil.

'The Doctor is staying here in Trivelho, but we thought you might like to come along,' continued the mine manager. He pointed at the machine gun. 'You can bring your friend.'

'Okay,' replied John. 'I am not going to carry and fire it simultaneously. No way.' He certainly wasn't – he'd done that very thing in an emergency once and still had back pains from it. 'Plus no silver bullets.'

'Given the size of that thing and the bullets it fires, you won't need silver,' commented Avtandil wryly.

There was no reply from John, who stared curiously at an MVD soldier who had come out of the town hall. The man seemed familiar in a strange way, despite the scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face.

'The Doctor,' explained Evgeniy, leaning in close to whisper. 'Disguised to prevent that GRU spy from discovering him.'

Walking rapidly from one pole to another, the MVD-besuited Doctor began to check the overlay of the net, before moving on to the adapted aerials. They had to be accurately positioned individually, and tied into the energy grid with cables that wouldn't fuse or melt when suddenly full of current. The parabolic dishes had to be spaced out equidistantly on the edge of the grid, with a common focus at the centre of the grid. Nobody else could be trusted to do the work, especially since nobody else knew what the Doctor was doing or how the whole arrangement worked – an omission that the Time Lord deemed essential. If people survived this event then he didn't want them having prior knowledge of technology from the far future.

John was appalled at the noise of the aerosan; the confined space and stink of diesel and overheated lubricants he coped with. He diligently went at the banana-sized machine gun rounds with a metal file.

Evgeniy brought along an axe, whilst Avtandil carried a single-barrel shotgun borrowed from the civilian militia, loaded with silver shot.

'Do you know where this cable is?' asked John. 'I don't want to have to search for it, not lugging this gun around.'

'Oh, yes. In the mechanic's stores,' replied Evgeniy, with an air of assurance.

'We hope,' added Avtandil in a mutter, barely audible above the engine.

The upward incline of the approach road to Nickel Extraction Combine Number One was gentle enough for the aerosan to travel up it, at a reduced rate.

'Don't worry, we'll be able to leave all the faster,' shouted the leather-faced driver. The noisy vehicle got even noisier as the rising walls on either side reflected the engine sound back at them. The driver slowed and swung them in a big arc around the rear of the power plant once they reached the quarry proper, coming to a stop next to the mechanic's stores, engine running.

'Get it pointed at the exit and don't turn the engine off!' instructed Evgeniy. The trio of passengers set off warily, Avtandil carrying the muzzle end of the machine gun.

'Oh dear,' murmured Evgeniy, stopping in front of the stores building. The wooden doors were open, a padlock and chains lay shattered and scattered on the ground and there were narrow naked footprints visible in the quarry floor. Less remarked were sets of caterpillar tracks.

'Beware of ambush,' warned John. 'There could be one or two or a whole flock of those creatures inside, safe from the sun.'

Just to be on the safe side, he motioned Evgeniy back. The unfortunate Avtandil had to carry the muzzle end of the machine gun, in the space made by cocking an elbow out to one side and clasping both hands together.

'Open your mouth,' warned John. He hefted the weapon and fired a short burst, swinging the muzzle left to right across the front of the wooden building. Splinters flew about, Avtandil swore in Georgian as the gun barrel grew hot and his ears were assaulted, and a muted shriek came from the sheds.

'That's one of them,' shouted Evgeniy, clutching his axe all the tighter. John swapped his over-sized machine gun for Avtandil's shotgun and indicated that Evgeniy pull the left-hand door fully open with his axe-blade. More shrieks sounded from within the shed as daylight swept in, revealing a Cadaverite cringing and hissing in a corner, away from the bright bars of daylight coming in through bullet-holes. Without ceremony, John shot the squalling creature dead.

Evgeniy peered in round the open doors, making a small sound of surprise. John looked around also, seeing empty racks and hooks, bare shelves and rifled cabinets.

'Stripped. They've taken all the stores,' said Evgeniy, anxiously casting around. 'Except these!'

The relief in his voice was obvious; "these" referred to a stack of cable drums stored one atop the other in a corner. The drums were extremely heavy, but under Evgeniy's guidance they were rolled out to the waiting aerosan, then into the rear up a couple of planks. When all six drums were in, the vehicles crude suspension was visibly lower. All three men were sweaty and tired, and mistakenly stayed outside the aerosan to catch their breath.

'I wonder why they pinched all the stores,' asked Evgeniy.

'And left a creature in that shed,' added Avtandil. 'Almost like a sentry.'

Guarding the cable? wondered John. Or keeping an eye out for human intruders?

The answer came abruptly into view around the side of the vehicle garage – the ancient Komsomolets tractor John had driven into the mine, now with the UV lamp removed, towing a trailer and sporting a strange, bulbous construction that compeletely enclosed the cab. The noise of the aerosan's engine had drowned out the approach of the tractor.

'In!' shouted John, practically throwing Evgeniy into the aerosan after Avtandil. The leather-faced driver, looking stunned, started away from the tractor. Lack of traction meant a slow start for the aerosan and for several agonised heartbeats they panicked that the far heavier tractor would catch and crush them. The walls of the power plant slid by to their left with mocking slowness; they barely managed to escape, turning in a wide arc again.

John felt his stomach flip when the driver slowed down.

'What are you doing! Keep going!'

'Not bloody likely, mate,' replied the driver, hotly. 'Just look where they parked.'

Having failed to catch the fleeing aerosan, the tractor had turned left at the power plant and made it to the quarry exit before them. Parked broadside on, together with the trailer it prevented the aerosan from leaving.

'They want that cable,' said Evgeniy. 'We were lucky those drums are so heavy; they had to get a trailer hitched to the tractor to tow them, and they had to go back into the mine to get a trailer.'

'Is that the old artillery tractor from town?' asked Avtandil. 'Because they've made it handle like a sports car. And stuck a black bubble on it. Doubtless to allow them to drive around in daylight.'

'It's our cable and they can't have it,' declared John.

'We can't get anywhere with our cable, however,' pointed out Evgeniy.

'Let's try a bit of shooting. Violence may persuade them to leave,' said John. With some effort a cable drum was shoved into the doorway, he rested the heavy machine gun on the drum, aimed as best he could and fired. No more than five rounds, one of which struck the strange black bubble on the tractor and ricocheted off, droning into the air like a bee. Another round struck the engine compartment, knocking up a cloud of dust.

The alien's response was immediate; the tow bar detached from the trailer and fell to earth with a dull clunk, the tractor turned fully against them and revved it's engine.

'Stop it!' shouted the driver. 'Don't get them charging at us, whatever you do. This thing can't reverse.'

A stalemate. The position endured for at least a minute.

'The Doctor needs the cable. The aliens want the cable. We can't carry it back to town. We can't get past that tractor.'

'And time is crucial,' added Evgeniy.

'Don't you have great big boxfuls of dynamite lying around in mines?' asked John. Avtandil nodded, then looked crestfallen.

'They would have been in the stores sheds.'

He suddenly perked up again, stuck his head out of the doorway and looked backwards into the quarry.

'Back in a minute,' he warned, jumping out and striding off towards the power plant.

'Keep clear of the buildings. There may be more hiding,' called Evgeniy. He turned to face John. 'Really, I have no idea what he's doing.'

John poked his head out of the doorway. The Georgian had warily approached the power plant, keeping away from the building and instead walking up behind it to the pair of big fuel tanks, each the size of a single-decker bus that sat there. He checked gauges on the side of each, kicked them for good measure and came hurrying back to the others.

'Boss, we got a fuel delivery a fortnight ago, didn't we? And since this emergency came up we haven't been using it in any great quantities. Well, those tanks have at least twenty tonnes of fuel in them. I say we release it all and set it alight, roast that tractor and the monsters in it.'

'What a horrid idea!' exclaimed Evgeniy.

'I like it,' stated John. 'But they might just reverse out of trouble. You'd need to get a lot of fuel running before setting it alight.'

'Don't you lot of bloody maniacs start setting this thing alight! I warned you we can't reverse,' said the driver, alarmed. 'Whatever you think up better be quick. They might have other tractors.'

'I'm not worried about that,' replied Evgeniy. 'If they had other vehicles capable of travelling in sunlight then we'd have -'

'Piping!' shouted Avtandil, making the driver jump. 'Plastic piping, from the mine tunnels, used to carry cables bundled together.'

'Thank you for reminding me,' said Evgeniy. 'And?'

'Get a hundred metres, put one end under the fuel tank outlet and stretch the other end as near the tractor as possible. Open the valve, soak the tractor, set it alight.'

Realising that using a pipe in such a manner would avoid incinerating their aerosan, Evgeniy nodded.

'Let's get a move on then!' said John. 'Time matters.'

'Ah – the piping would have been in the stores shed. We'll need to actually go into the mine to get any.'

John stared very hard at Avtandil, who shrugged ruefully.

'Sorry. Only place to get it.'

'Well, you're going to be carrying the muzzle end of the Dushka, mate, because that mine entrance is going to be sprayed with bullets. For the record, I am _not_ happy about this. Come on!'

Casting apprehensive glances backwards, Avtandil and John crept behind the power plant buildings, then kept heading north, which took them up and past the vehicle garage. This meant they could get to the mine entrance without being seen by the creatures in the tractor.

'Assume the position,' ordered John, cocking the machine gun. Avtandil reluctantly made an angle with his elbow poking out and John lodged the gun in the space thus created. 'Start walking forwards. Keep your eyes shut and your mouth open.'

The pair moved forward slowly, Avtandil stumbling thanks to the suggestion that he keep his eyes closed. John began firing at the cavernous mine entrance, short bursts of no more than three rounds. The tracers ricocheted around inside the interior like great glowing golf-balls, knocking great lumps of stone from the walls and throwing dust up.

One of the Cadaverites stood in the gloom within the tunnels just beyond daylight, hissing and gibbering at the two men, probably reporting back to it's brethren safer in the darker depths. John caught it with a lucky shot in the head, and the improvised dum-dum effect of the filed bullet shattered the creatures cranium apart. It fell dead, twitching slightly. Whether because of this or other reasons, they got into the tunnel without problem, where Avtandil sliced a great length of plastic tubing from the wall, looping it around his torso like a polythene python.

John, propping the unwieldy gun on stanchions hammered into the tunnel wall, felt uneasy that things had been so easy.

'This is too easy,' he commented to Avtandil when they were safely outside in daylight. 'I reckoned on a wave of them trying to swamp us.'

The Georgian laughed shortly and sagely.

'To be honest, Vanya, I think they are scared of you. For all their supposed mental powers and superhuman strength, you've killed altogether too many of them.'

There was a jaunty strut to the officer's walk before they got back to the aerosan.

'About time!' scolded Evgeniy. 'That damn tractor has been revving it's engine like nothing on earth. They'll try ramming us any minute now.'

'No they won't,' corrected John. 'Because they can't do a thing in daylight. They could very well crush us to pulp under the tracks of that thing, but they can't retrieve the cable drums until dark.'

'Stop gassing and pull this thing backwards, far as you can,' instructed the driver. 'Your genius with the plastic pipe didn't get a long enough piece.'

John and Evgeniy both delivered killer looks.

'You could always go back for more,' added Evgeniy, softly. The driver sat further upright in alarm.

'No way! No, no, I just meant he only got eighty metres or so of pipe instead of a hundred. We need to be further back or the aerosan'll get toasted.'

Avtandil was occupied in splicing pipe to the outlet valves of the diesel tanks. Currently he was concealed from the tractor-borne observers by the bulk of the aerosan, so John was loath to move the vehicle, even presuming that the two of them could shift it.

'It's a caravan on skis. It'll move easily,' said Evgeniy, jumping down outside.

'Easy enough for you to say,' complained John. 'Who here is biggest and has to pull hardest?'

Avtandil walking backwards, unreeling pipe, came past them.

'Don't just stand there, do something useful,' he called.

To the slight astonishment of both John and Evgeniy (if he were honest), determined pulling at the aerosan moved it backwards across the slush and ice of the quarry floor, six inches at a time.

'Yo heave-ho, yo heave-ho – just like the Volga Boat Song,' joked John.

Evgeniy looked at him with an expression of incomprehension that said: ah, yes, Ukranian humour.

Avtandil darted back past them to the diesel tanks and turned on the valves with the aid of a hammer, since the parts were rusted and slow to move. Small streams of fuel shot into the air from the poorly-fitting joints where the pipe had been rammed into the valves, the piping began to twist and writhe like a living thing and Evgeniy asked:

'How do we light it?'

The quick answer was the heavy machine gun. The tracer rounds it fired would light anything as flammable as diesel.

John carried his weapon to the front of the aerosan, where he could see the blue plastic pipe not five yards distant, gushing a continuous stream of stinking diesel fuel, which formed a sluggish stream that ran down the exit road. Because of the approach road's angle, the fuel ran fairly rapidly, and it stuck to the ruts in the road. John balanced his weapon on the aerosan's front hull and fired. A tracer round ignited the running fuel almost immediately, creating a rip of flame that ran back and forwards, throwing up dense black smoke.

By the time he fired the fuel, it had begun to wash around the caterpillars of the tractor and within seconds a rippling tide of flame crept up the paintwork and licked at the strange black bubble atop the cab, which in turn began to smoke and fume. The tractor abruptly revved to a screechingly high pitch, moved forward a little and then reversed backwards far too fast, hitting the trailer and overturning it. Trapped by its overturned trailer, the tractor sat squarely in the flood-path of burning fuel and was rapidly consumed. The black bubble fell apart within minutes, revealing the charred corpses of half a dozen aliens.

Evgeniy sighed hugely.

'At last! Driver – get us back to Trevilho, very quickly.'

A miniature convoy of two towing vehicles and two guns was motionless on the highway at PK451, awaiting the escort vehicle.s Given that nobody knew what the escort would consist of – squadrons of motorbike outriders, tanks, helicopters or none of the above – attention focussed on the air and the earth equally. Armed soldiers stood guard over the artillery pieces, the affectionately regarded "Ten Tonne Gun", in case spectators turned up in the wilds of northern Russia on this back road for a nosey, fantastically unlikely though that might be.

Colonel Proskurov opened his thermos of shchi and poured out a cup, turning to his second in command, Major Godunov, a man deemed politically reliable enough to accompany them.

'You ever been on an exercise where the AAS1's were used, Felip?'

Godunov, prematurely bald and with a chubby, baby-like face, shook his head.

'No, sir. Never heard of them being used on an exercise at all. That includes being on the border for several with the Chinks and the Hermans.'

Godunov might be politically reliable but his biases were apparent.

'That's not very comradely, Felip. Our "socialist brothers in arms" and all that.'

'Socialist they may be sir, brothers they are not. They're still German on the inside.'

Proskurov stifled an amused snort. Doubtless the East Germans thought much the same of the Soviet Armed forces and the Group of Soviet Forces Germany.

'Even when things got hot in Prague, nobody wheeled out the fuses for nuclear artillery shells. And the map reference we move to is within the borders of Russia. More, it's near the border with Finland.' He refrained from using the name of the town itself; Trevilho. He'd never heard of it before, not that such ignorance meant anything – there were tens of thousands of minor provincial towns he'd never heard of.

Godunov bowed his head in acknowledgement.

'Perhaps we're to make a show of strength against the Finns. Even if they are a collection of rubber-legged old women.'

Proskurov wagged a finger.

'Now, now. They are officially a neutral nation, not part of the evil Western capitalist conspiracy. Or is that evil Western conspiratorial capitalists? A small harmless neighbour anyway.'

Companionable silence settled over the artillerymen, settled in the back of their vehicles, until one soldier, with sharper eyes than the rest, called a warning and pointed eastwards, down the way they had come.

Several dancing points of light were visible on the road, a collection of vehicles travelling in convoy.

Our escort, said the Colonel to himself. The lights grew brighter and closer, resolving into motorcycles and BRDM armoured cars. A single GAZ truck in the middle of the escort convoy seemed out of place, until the Colonel realised that there must be a location to keep the nuclear artillery shells secure.

One of the motorcycles roared off the road and alongside the artillery tractors, the rider looking into the cabs. The Colonel leaned out of a window.

'Colonel Proskurov. Do you have orders for us?'

The rider nodded, unable to speak over the thunder of his bike. Sighing, the Colonel clambered out of the cab and down alongside the rider, producing his official ID card with the Nuclear Authorisation Code designation. The rider produced a similar tag from a pocket and checked that the two matched. Then, satisfied, he reached inside his jacket and produced a slim leather wallet, giving it to the colonel, and requiring that it be signed for.

Colonel Proskurov climbed back into the cab and opened the wallet, whilst Godunov looked studiedly out of the window at the pines marching endlessly back on the other side.

Finally, after a delay caused by the colonel reading the instructions five times to make sure he hadn't misread them, the whole convoy moved off westwards, towards Trevilho.

'Excellent!' said the Doctor when presented with the cable drums. 'Good quality insulation on high-capacity copper wiring, and hundreds of metres per drum.'

'Don't sound so appreciative,' warned Evgeniy. 'Remember the spy.'

The Doctor made a dismissive sound.

'Oh him - I expect he's trying to get past the cordon to avoid getting disintegrated tomorrow. He certainly hasn't interrupted work here.'

'Terrible!' commented the Doctor when told that the Cadaverites were after cable themselves, and had already stripped the mechanic's store sheds of all equipment. In fact he smacked one fist into the palm of the other hand. 'Zelinski! It must be him!'

'Must it,' said John, not seeing how it must be anything.

'What are you talking about?' asked Avtandil. 'Why him?'

The Doctor sighed.

'He got away, and must have seen the preparations we've been making here in the town square. He reported them back to the Children of the Night, who promptly worked out what I'm trying to do. Now _they_ are trying to build a shield.'

Whoops, thought John. A bit of a problem.

'What about cables in the mine itself? Can they use them?' the Doctor asked Evgeniy, who frowned and pursed his lips.

'Hmm. Not really, no. The cable in storage was to replace cables in the mine, which are old, going back the thirties, some of them. Perished insulation. Not very high quality. You could build a grid like the one we have in the town square, but it wouldn't last very long before it burnt out.'

The Doctor pursed his lips and shook his head.

'That's bad. That's very bad.'

'Oh? Why so?' asked Evgeniy, slightly at a loss.

The Doctor turned his head to stare at him.

'Because, Evgeniy, we have the cable that they desperately need. And they will try to get it back.'

Vassili rubbed an eyebrow. The Doctor had told him how important it was to get work done in daylight, when they could move freely and the oupirs couldn't. Yes, that was fine, he understood that. What he couldn't do was work faster than humanly possible.

He stood, wearing huge rubber gloves which stank to high heaven since they weren't properly cured, under the dank roof of the transformer station. "Station" being a rather grand term for a windowless concrete block surrounded by a three metre wall topped with barbed wire. The power cables for the entire town came here, running seventy kilometres underground from Plesetsk. As a fervent Komsomol member he had memorised why the electricity combine used underground cables – because it rendered the electricity supply immune to interference from weather. Up here in the provincial north of Russia the weather had a great deal to say about how phone and power lines behaved.

Now all he had to do was shut down the transformer. Once current ceased to flow he could open up the plant and get access to the incoming power lines, splice in the cables brought from the nickel combine and lead them out across the town to the incredible erection wrought by the Doctor in the town square.

However, however, however, that procedure, if successful, brought it's own problems; the lighting in the town square used bulbs that simulated daylight, which kept the vile oupirs at bay. No power to the bulbs from the transformer meant no oupir-repellent lighting. And the soldiery were running short of silver ammunition. So they had to get everything ready for operating at the last minute.

Vassili remembered what the Doctor had replied when asked about testing: "We can only test it once – when it gets turned on." Bold words. They actually meant a lot since the man would be here with all the potential victims when the energy grid got activated. Not that Vassili's professional curiosity had been satisfied. The Doctor was careful not to discuss the principles of his shield – which Vassili recognised possessed all the characteristics of the "force-fields" from his youthful reading – and to stop people from examining various components of it. "Extremely delicate" was the reason.

' "Extremely delicate" my hairy behind,' muttered Vassili to himself. 'Extremely secret more like it. Who does he think he's kidding? As if this technology is from round here.'

' "Round here" being where, exactly?' came a voice form behind him. The Doctor's voice, from a man who possessed the ability to sneak up on one more craftily than a Cossack. After recovering from his surprise, Vassili lit a cigarette and looked at the uninvited visitor acutely.

'Force-fields. Sonic weapons. Indestructible blue wooden boxes. None of which are human technology, Doctor. Anyone possessing technology like that is not from "round here".'

The Doctor suppressed a smile.

'You know, Vassili, at every turn here in the Soviet Union people guess who or what I am. I get the feeling that perhaps they don't believe everything they are told, that they retain the capacity for independent thought.'

Vassili puffed away on the cigarette, not answering. Let matey dig his own grave a little deeper.

'What progress have you made?' asked the Doctor.

Well, that was quantifiable, concrete, practical information.

'I've unscrewed all the access panels on the transformer and removed them. Don't go anywhere near it, you'll get a shock. The cable for splicing in is bared to a metre in length, all insulation scraped off. The cable runs all the way back to the town square.'

The Doctor cast a perceptive glance over the humming electrical plant butted against the corner of the room, then at the controls set into a panel sat in front of the machine itself.

I hope my proxy ambassador is able to persuade people! thought the Doctor.

John stood in the town square, looking deadpan even if his thoughts were seething with indignation.

'Taking off just like that! Not the done thing.' Of course the Doctor had a lot to cope with, but he could at least tell people where he was going. And John had been left with a job to do which he didn't relish very much. He hefted the megaphone experimentally, then put it to his lips and pressed the trigger. Feedback squealed around the town square, which at least caught people's attention.

'Hello, hello, Agent Izvestilnyuk speaking. I repeat, this is Agent Izvestilnyuk speaking. Can I have your attention please. Thank you.' That much remained a guess. John had no idea of who, if anyone, was paying attention. 'The lighting in the town square will be going out shortly in order to provide power for the protective shield. Please do not panic. I repeat, please do not panic, remain calm and order will be restored.'

The number of people present in the square seemed to be a gauge of what they believed about the attempts being made to save them. Currently there were about two hundred family groups, mustering maybe eight hundred people. After John's megaphone broadcast, a slow haemorrhage of townspeople took place, leaving the town for a place on the cordon perimeter. They knew the town better than he did, so trying to prevent people escaping was fruitless.

One good thing he did was to inspire children in the town square encampment, a whole cluster of them in a makeshift creche looked over by Anya, entertaining them with tunes played on a flute. Whilst walking by, from the corner of his eye he noticed they were looking at him. He came to an abrupt stop, put his feet together, hopped backwards, jumped carefully forwards and managed to balance upright on his hands, walking forwards on them for several paces before beginning to wobble. He fell backwards again, landing on his feet and remaining deadpan, turning smartly on his heels to face the way he had come and stomping backwards across the square to where he had been heading originally. This wasn't as difficult for him as other people would have found, since his training for and experience in Ulster included "silly walks". The group of children found his sombre antics hilarious, especially Irina, who covered her mouth whilst laughing.

'Children, children,' exclaimed Anya. 'You see the big man? Well, you may be scared of the monsters, but _they_ are scared of _him_! If trouble comes –' and her voice trailed off indeterminately.

The Doctor had done as much he could in the pokey little electricity sub-station, helping Vassili to prepare electrical cables and the transformer. Between the two of them, they had put together an improvised junction box. Now he needed to get over to the TARDIS with yet more cable. He pushed a drum ahead of him, unreeling as he went.

Crossing the town square, he noticed that the shades of evening were drawing in. The fire kept constantly going for communal cooking blazed brighter than usual, keeping darkness at bay. Whilst it did lend an air of jollity to the proceedings, it also warned of imminent darkness.

I have less time than I thought and considerably less than I like, he told himself, pacing off on his long legs, keeping the drum rolling. Occasional members of the public happened past him, only sparing a sidelong glance at the MVD soldier squelching a big wooden drum along the sleety road. The cable ran out short of the TARDIS, so he retraced his steps, getting back to the cobbles of the town square in time to see the much-battered BTR revving its engines. People around the square in their huddles stopped to look up from whatever they were doing. The big vehicle revved again, then ponderously wheeled about, narrowly missing a telephone pole, forcing a family to scatter to avoid being crushed. The matronly woman of the group shouted abuse at the BTR, which showed no signs of stopping.

'They're stealing it!' shouted a spectator, pointing incredulously at the personnel carrier.

'Stop!' yelled the Doctor, waving madly in front of the BTR. The driver took no notice of him at all and the Doctor jumped to avoid being crushed. 'Idiots!' he shouted, shaking a fist at the departing vehicle.

Semyon came up, looking puzzled.

'What's going on? Where are they taking the BTR?'

The Doctor's response could only be a shrug.

'I suspect, and hope to be proved wrong, that they have taken the vehicle to try and break out of the cordon.'

Semyon snorted.

'Fat chance! With only five wheels and no guns they haven't a hope.'

The lone sentry on the town hall roof sat on a chair and sipped vodka-laced tea to keep warm and motivated. The drink came from a flask he'd made up, with the addition of honey.

His job was to keep watch for the Children of the Night, sweeping the town ruins and beyond with binoculars for any sign of the white monsters creeping or running closer. Zhadov – a man not to be argued with – had told him to get up on the roof for tonight; the monsters were guaranteed to attack, apparently. If anything suspicious took place he had a phone on an extension cord, and would ring the foyer.

A hubbub in the town square below, accompanied by rumbling diesel engines, didn't interest or involve him. Five minutes later a dark moving object on the snowfields beyond the town did involve him. Picking up the binoculars, he looked long and hard at the travelling shape, deducing that it was the damaged BTR which had been retrieved from the mine. He rang the foyer.

'What bloody fool gave permission for that mobile coffin to go wandering out in no-mans land?' he asked.

'Nobody. They stole it,' replied the phone operator shortly.

'Do they think that cordon doesn't use infra-red lights at night?'

Abruptly, a searchlight came on amongst the cordon troops, flicking it's long, probing beam across the snows until sweeping across the BTR, then returning to it. Another searchlight came on, catching the BTR, which fishtailed and stopped driving at the cordon, instead altering course to move parallel to it. This didn't save the vehicle; two trails of sparks flew at it from different parts of the cordon, hitting and creating big roiling clouds of flame that erupted from blown-open hatches and windows.

Anti-tank rockets, surmised the sentry. For good measure a helicopter took off in the middle distance, leisurely made its way to the blazing wreck and proceeded to pepper it with machine gun and cannon fire. Once again the sentry rang down.

'Whoever was in the BTR is charcoal by now. They got picked off by rockets and helicopters.'

The cordon remained as tight and relentless as ever. Unsurprising, with the frightening (and untrue) briefing given to the troops manning it.

John came back late to the square, having been trying to track the BTR and giving up; despite missing three wheels it moved faster than he did. Witnesses amongst the families there told of men behaving suspiciously around the vehicle, passing round bottles of drink before clambering inside. The Doctor had been seen – or rather a very busy MVD soldier had been seen – rolling cable drums back to the warehouse ruins where the very peculiar blue wooden box stood. The smell of stew being cooked in a communal pot drifted past John's nostrils, making his stomach contract protestingly.

'Hello there,' he introduced himself to the stout babushka stirring the pot. 'Any food going spare for a hungry chap?'

The elderly woman looked up with bright eyes in her seamed face, judging him.

'Oh, the oupir-killer. I suppose you can. You got my grandchild back alive,' and she patted a small, grubby child sitting next to her. John gave an extremely solemn wink and was rewarded with a look of surprise whilst he gulped the stew down.

'Comrade Izvestilnyuk, could I have a quick word?' asked a heavily-disguised voice.

John turned to see an MVD soldier behind him. The Doctor, of course, wrapped up in camouflage.

'Certainly officer,' replied the officer in a stage voice. They moved out of earshot of the refugee Russians.

'John, the aliens are bound to attack tonight. In fact they have to if they intend to survive. There isn't time for them to create a protective shield even if they get hold of enough cable, so they are going to attempt to capture this one.'

'Ah. Bad news, that. You and I are the only ones who are immune to their influence.'

The Doctor frowned in concern.

'Perfectly true. So when I leave to run this cable to the Tardis, you will be the sole defender here. Zhadov put a sentry on the town hall roof, so you may get a few minutes warning, but be careful!'

'We still have the fire-bombs I improvised.'

The Doctor frowned further. He didn't like weapons at the best of times.

'Don't rely on them. You improvised them with the help of Zelinski. If that unfortunate man has returned to the aliens they know all about your incendiary trap.'

At the word "unfortunate" John's jaw sagged.

'You don't feel sorry for that bloody man, do you, Doctor!'

He got a stern look from his companion.

'He never asked for what happened to him. Don't sit in judgement on others, John. Unfortunate things can simply happen to people who deserve better.'

With that to ponder on, he left John behind.

**SIXTEEN**

The Doctor stopped where the first drum of cable ran out, and stooped to attach a heavy-duty male connector, working quickly yet carefully. The new drum of cable was unreeled a little to give the cable some play, and he fitted a female counterpart to it, plugging the two together. They docked with a loud and positive "click". He took time to examine the connection critically, because it would be handling information and energies way way beyond what it had been designed for.

During the mechanical alteration, he became aware of an audience; three men stood in the shadows across the street, not moving yet watching him closely. The trio made no move to stop him and he could hear the clink of glass denoting bottles of drink. An air of abstract malice accompanied their scrutiny, that of wolves waiting to pick off a straggler.

The breakdown begins! he told himself. Stealing the BTR was merely the most extreme example; these outcasts are attempting to find escape and solace in alcohol, since they cannot leave town. The urban counterparts of the figures he'd seen hiding in the snow yesterday.

Keeping to the middle of the road, where the slush and mud coated his boots, he remained warily alert for any possible furtive following by the three men, which made the surprise when the drum ran into and onto another person's boots, right in front of him, all the greater.

'Stay exactly where you are. Any attempt to escape and I will shoot you,' intoned the stranger, well-buttoned up around the face. His right hand remained in shadow but had the unmistakable posture of a firearm held there.

'Really!' snapped the Doctor. 'This is intolerable!' A nasty suspicion took hold in his mind. 'Zelinski?'

A short laugh, lacking warmth or humour, was the only reply.

'Not Zelinski, then. Very well, how can I help you?'

'You can get me through the cordon,' replied the other man. His tone was cool and determined.

'I most certainly cannot!' blustered the Doctor. 'A mere soldier in the Ministry of the Interior -'

'Don't pretend,' snapped the other man, all fake humour draining out of his voice. 'It took me a while to realise you are The Doctor, not a bumbling soldier. With you, I have a passage out of here.'

A touch of desperation underlay the Time Lord's next words.

'Very well, you know who I am – and you surely know that everyone in this town is doomed unless I complete my work here.'

'Then they're doomed. I'm more interested in my own skin and coming out of this madhouse with a promotion. Move over to the left and follow the road out of town.'

The Doctor measured distances rapidly, determined not to go with this desperate and selfish individual – pretty obviously the GRU man marooned inside Trevilho with a watching brief. A quick leap –

With a loud "pop" and a short, bright flash, a gun went off, the bullet whizzing past the Doctor's left ear. The flash came from the vicinity of the interlopers right hand. Silenced, so nobody would come to investigate the sound of shots where there ought to be none.

'Don't mess me around. Now, empty your pockets.'

An impressive mound of bric-a-brac ended up piled between them, even if the Doctor hadn't been using the capacious pockets of his tailored suit and cape.

'What are you, a moving junk-yard? No! Don't even touch it. Get moving.'

The GRU agent kept a respectful distance between the two of them at all times, ensuring that the Doctor never got close enough to utilise his impressive unarmed combat skills.

'They won't let either of us past the military cordon alive, you know,' remarked the Doctor conversationally, whilst plodding down the streets in the dark. 'And I mean both lots of "they" when I say that.'

'Let me worry about that,' said the other man. 'Now be quiet.'

A man of unusual stupidity or bravery or both, decided the Doctor, to dismiss the Cadaverites like that.

A silence of unusual intensity clung around the pair as they walked down the slushy road to the outskirts of town. There the primitive roadway curved back round to begin a circuit of Trivelho, and they were faced with a barrier of piled snow, compacted into a mound three metres high along the length of the road. Forcing a way into and past this frigid, gelid barrier resulted in the Doctor suffering a fit of shivering that prevented him from being able to speak. The mysterious gunman shook visibly, muttering and cursing at the cold and snow.

'Y – you're not a country boy, are you?' stammered the Doctor, to be greeted by a series of shivering curses. 'No, no, I suspected as much. C - can you hear anything?' he continued.

'Shut up! All I hear is you babbling!' snapped the other man. The Doctor refrained from any hasty comment; the agent seemed stressed to near-breaking point by his experiences in Trevilho. Frowning with concentration, the Doctor worked out dates and times.

'You never actually saw any oupirs, did you! The only one you might have seen went into the helicopter under wraps.' Good grief, that explained such cavalier conduct on the agent's behalf! He literally did not know what he was walking into.

A hissed warning to shut up was the only reply. Silently, apart from the squeak of snow underfoot, they trudged on.

'Right. Stop here,' hissed the GRU agent, sinking down onto one knee.

'What on earth for!' asked the Doctor, sincerely astonished that they were suddenly halted in the snow, barely beyond the town and a long way from the cordon.

He got no answer, his captor merely studying his wrist.

Must be checking his watch, thought the Doctor. Why?

'We're here for five minutes and thirty seconds,' pronounced the agent, looking off to the middle distance. 'That's how long it takes for the routine armoured car patrol at the cordon to pass by here. I timed it.'

'Professionally competent, at least,' mock-congratulated the Doctor.

The other man sneered back.

'Trying to provoke me? I'm not about to kill you, Doctor, not when you are my passport across the cordon.'

Theatrically, the Doctor sighed.

'My dear fellow, the troops in the cordon have orders to shoot to kill on sight. No warnings, no warning shots. We are both merely marching to martyrdom.'

The agent sneered silently, but his heart wasn't in it. He fumbled a torch out of a pocket, looked at the bulb and nodded to himself. Perhaps he hoped the Doctor wouldn't notice the trembling hands.

'Time check over. Get moving again.'

Once again, the Doctor was struck by the sheer silence of the eerie, dim landscape. Thin clouds allowed moonlight to illuminate the snowy fields and permitted both men to see more than a darker, drier countryside would; a haunted, half-lit quilt of snow, trees, fences and buried buildings.

'We need to be careful not to fall into abandoned mine workings,' cautioned the Doctor. 'I've spent far too long stuck in a mine already.'

Muttered insults were the only reply.

A seemingly innocuous flurry of snow ahead, moving at speed across their path, made the Doctor lurch to a stop. His companion stopped, too.

'What have you stopped for, you idiot. Keep moving!'

'We're not alone out here,' whispered the Doctor, remaining still. The GRU agent got even angrier, judging by the way he stamped his feet.

'Of course we're not! There's a brigade's worth of troops out there waiting for us! Now get moving!'

'I meant the oupirs are out here, too,' whispered the Doctor, pointing to another rill of thrown snow away to one side. An intake of breath meant his captor saw the movement, too.

The Doctor understood that things had come to a very bad pass. He stood in front of a man with a gun, a panicked and frightened man who might very well shoot first without asking any questions. Ahead of them were the Children of the Night, slinking about under the snow where they remained invisible, liable to fall upon both captor and captive and kill both. Further away lay the military cordon thrown up by the Red Army, which would kill them both in a heartbeat. And still further off in the distance, getting closer with every minute, was a convoy of artilley that fired nuclear rounds, capable of killing every living thing in Trevilho.

Time was running out.

"Stop it! Stop it! that tickles!' shrieked Kandida, wriggling away from the hands of her husband as they crept up her sides of her dress.

'But, darling, sweetest, who will help with my tie?' asked Tybalt, mockingly. He stood behind her, with the untied tie draped loosely around his neck.

'Leave Mummy alone!' yelled a small female voice, emphasising the demand with a hairbrush applied to Tybalt's shin.

'Ow!' he exclaimed, rubbing the spot where his daughter had hit him. 'Violetta, I was only joking.' He stared at Kandida ruefully.

'Now, Visha, darling, you know better than to hit Daddy. Go and wait in the lounge.'

'Okay!' said the four-year old proudly. She marched off out of the bedroon, the hairbrush sat on her shoulder like a rifle. Tybalt looked at his wife, shaking his head.

'So much her mother's daughter,' he said. 'Now, joking apart, can you help with this tie?' His lack of dexterity with ties consituted an embarassing gap in his vocation. Kandida took hold of the dress item mentioned, tightened it to near-asphyxiation and deftly formed a double-knot.

'There,' she declared, satisfied. Tybalt sighed.

'Go and see Violetta before you leave,' instructed Kandida. Tybalt sighed again. His wife cocked a knowing eye at his amateur dramatics.

Violetta sat in the lounge at a low table, daintily eating warm porrige from a bowl with a gaily-coloured wooden spoon.

'Did you salt your porrige?' asked her father. She solemnly nodded.

'Because?' he continued.

'Because otherwise there will be a lack of sodium in my diet,' she said, parrotting words taught long ago.

'And because the magic kasha monsters will erupt from your bowl - oh, just going dear,' continued the father, gathering up his uniform jacket and lockable-combination metal briefcase. His peaked cap hung on a hook in the hall, which he swung past and collected donning a scarf and greatcoat. Candida came for a goodbye kiss at the door, which made him pause. Normally she never bothered once he left the lounge, since it made Violetta tetchy and awkward.

'Make sure you miss me,' he said, aiming for a light tone.

'Be careful. Be careful, remember Violetta needs a father and come home safe,' replied Kandida, no trace of humour on her face.

Tybalt clattered down the stairs with a blank face but a busy mind. What did Kandy mean?

Outside the secured block of flats, his wait amounted to no more than five minutes. A ZIL cruised up alongside the kerb, stopping to wind the nearside window down.

'Goosegrease,' said a voice from within.

'Don't mess about, Golyubov,' answered Tybalt crossly, having recognised the voice instantly.

'Goosegrease,' replied the voice, increasing in volume and intensity. Tybalt blinked hugely and pondered momentarily.

'Lemonjuice,' he replied, quickly and angrily. The far passenger door opened enough for him to get in, framing an ill-at-ease Golyubov.They had long sinceceased to bother with the supposedly-compulsory checks and countersigns.

'What are we playing silly spy games for?' Tybalt asked his co-pilot crossly, feeling that everyone else seemed to know more than he did.

'There's a flap on at the base,' replied Golyubov, tersely. Normally he was a chatty fellow. Today he drove them glumly to the airbase, the hissing of their tyre-chains the only noise. Snow started to fall while they were still driving, obscuring the lights and watchtowers of the naval airbase.

The sentries at the gates were as stoic and detached as ever – no change there – and insisted on seeing identity cards, signing the pilots in and checking the vehicle registration. Normal procedure, apart from twice as many guards being there this chilly morning.

'What kind of flap?' asked Tybalt, having waited half an hour for more information.

'That I don't know. My informant warned me to look sharp and smart today.'

'Hang on a minute – slow down,' instructed Tybalt. Their approach to the Base Commandant's offices took them past the aircraft hangars. Two big GAZ trucks were parked outside Hangar Twelve, which Tybalt found interesting, because that was where his own aircraft currently sat.

Golyubov darted a quick glance at the hangars, too, noticing the sentries standing outside it. Tybalt chewed the inside of his cheek, wondering.

They both entered the Base Commandants office to formally sign in, beginning their duty roster. The immaculately-turned out junior officer acting as secretary stopped them from leaving.

'The General needs to see you both right away, sir.'

Both pilots exchanged curious glances. Tybalt wondered what guilty secret made Golyubov swallow nervously. The lieutenant knocked on the General's door, opened it and announced Captains Tybalt and Golyubov. A quick march across the carpet and two swift salutes later, both men were invited to sit. Tybalt made sure to keep his metal briefcase close by his feet. Not that the General might steal it, but he might find fault with an officer who didn't look after Top Secret documents.

'Gentlemen,' said the General, and stopped abruptly. He frowned deeply, pushed his chair back, then stood up and turned to look at the blinds across the big picture window. He turned back to face them, still frowning. Making a decision, he sat down and exhaled.

'Gentlemen, you know my career started out in light bombers.' Tybalt and Golyubov glanced involuntarily at one wall of the office, which had grainy monochrome photographs that occasionally featured a younger, slimmer, more cheerful General.

'The Petlyakov PE2. Wonderful aircraft. Manouvrable, robust, fast and reliable. Despite all that our squadron was down to five aircraft by August of '41, during the big retreat. Then we got orders to attack and destroy a railway marshalling yard at Kolovino, to stop the Fascists from capturing it intact and using the rolling stock, the locomotives and the supplies they carried.

'Well, we carried out the attack, even when we realised that the yards were still full of Russian workers. Kolovino had been abandoned by us but not yet occupied by the Nazis. So we blasted the whole place apart. I felt sick afterwards. But orders are just that – orders. And we had to stop the Nazi's getting that yard.'

He looked at both men directly.

'Your orders, as delivered straight from the Admiralty, are to carry out an attack on a mine directly outside the town of Trivelho, using an air-launched cruise missile with a nuclear warhead.'

Perfect silence settled on the room. The distant accelerating whine of an aircraft taking off came clear across the runways.

'Are we permitted to ask why, sir?' asked Tybalt.

'No, you may not, Captain. Mostly because I have not been given a reason myself.'

'Then why us, General?' asked Golyubov.

The General sighed.

'Because of all the bomber crews here, your crew performs the best in the training exercises. This mission is a precision attack on a point target, which you excel at.'

The point targets we attack are ships and submarines, thought Tybalt. A mine? I suppose it can't manouvre to avoid contact, or fire at us, or jam our electronics. Quite the easy option, really.

'Your missile launch is to be the signal for a ground bombardment of the town itself. You'll find exact details in the Briefing Room with the Operations and Meteorology officers. Take your crew there, and remain there until you leave to board your aircraft. Under _no_ circumstances are you to communicate with anyone outside the Briefing Room. Understood? Very well, gentlemen, you are dismissed.'

Once safely outsid the Base Commandant's Office, Tybalt let out a long whistle, and Golyubov breathed an enormous sigh. Wordlessly they looked at each other, feeling cold snow settle and melt on their faces.

'Come on,' said the Captain, finally. 'Time to go get our flying suits, and the rest of the crew.'

'Unless that gun is loaded with silver bullets, we really ought to retreat,' said the Doctor. His sonic screwdriver lay on a pile of miscellania back in the middle of a muddy street in Trevilho. They were defenceless against the Children, who were moving slowly closer under the blanket of snow that lay over the land.

Not thirty metres away, one of the aliens popped up from the concealing snow, darting upright, shrieking a challenge, then ducking down under the canopy of whiteness. The GRU agent loosed off three panicky shots that all went wide, long after the Cadaverite had gone back to cover.

'What was that!' he gasped.

'I told you, an oupir. Or something very close to it. The only thing that will kill them is silver, or ultra-violet light. Since we have neither, may I suggest we dignify our dilemma with a retreat?'

This suggestion met with unspoken approval. The Doctor backed away from the furtive flurries in the snow, his captor mirroring each move.

'Holy Mother. The briefing mentioned things like this. They were mentioned. I didn't believe any of it.'

'Believe,' said the Doctor, dryly. 'As a rational empiricist, you are beholden to factual information presented incontrovertibly. Behold your facts.'

'Devil damn them, what are they?' asked the agent in a choked voice. Another menacing hump under the snow moved across their front as they slowly retreated. The agent shone his feeble torch on the vaguely discernible lump of snow, which rapidly vanished.

'What kind of torch is that!' exclaimed the Doctor, excitedly realising that their situation might not be totally irredeemable.

'A signalling one,' mumbled the agent, swinging his gun in an arc. 'Infra-red so nobody can see it.'

Nobody – nobody except the troops along the cordon, who had their own infra-red lights and detectors. An infra-red torch – just the sort of kit a secret agent might carry.

'Eureka!' said the Doctor, remembering John's feedback from chatting to Zelinski. 'The light from that torch is extremely painful to those creatures. Keep it directed at them and we'll be safe.'

A large piece of rock, hurled with more strength than accuracy, smacked into the snow between them.

'_Mostly_ safe,' corrected the Doctor, still walking backwards.

'You called them oupirs. Creatures out of legend. How can that be – ah! Devil take you!' shouted the agent, dropping into a half-crouch and firing at one of the aliens that had darted up above the snows. With his nerves partially-recovered and the Doctor's steadying influence at hand, he hit the alien squarely in the temple. It shrieked appallingly, slapped both hands to the gaping head-wound and fell into the snows, thrashing like a hooked fish.

'An interesting question,' replied the Doctor, looking around to see other flurries in the snow abruptly retreating to a safer distance. 'Keep moving backwards. An interesting question. I postulate that the imprisoned Cadaverites were able to consciously or unconsciously influence humans in the world above them, perhaps even to the extent of having them tunnel and mine towards the prison caverns. Speculation. Keep moving backwards.'

They moved back and through the barrier of snow and ice at the boundary of Trivelho's roads.

'Keep your torch handy. In the town they have nowhere convenient to hide.'

True enough. The blanket of snow that lay over the fields beyond had disappeared in the town, replaced by muddy slush. The Cadaverites showed no interest in following the two men once their snow cover had vanished.

Trembling with reaction, the GRU man motioned the Doctor back into Trivelho, retracing their path along the muddy street. The small pile of the Doctor's belongings no longer sat neatly in the middle of the road. No, it had been scattered everywhere. More importantly, the sonic screwdriver wasn't there.

'Damn and blast!' snapped the Doctor. He had others, of course, in the Tardis. They were in the Tardis, however, and he wasn't.

'What are you so worried about?'

'My sonic screwdriver. The men hanging about here drinking must have stolen it.'

'How very unfortunate. Keep moving!' said the other man with no emotion at all.

'O – hey!' slurred a voice from the shadows. The GRU agent instantly covered the source with his gun. 'You got any more neat toys like that one?'

'Yeah!' enthused another voice from the opposite side of the road. 'The one that buzzes.'

Sensing an ambush, the agent took aim and fired, the loud popping noise followed by a whine as the bullet ricocheted away. Stunned surprise lasted for seconds until stunned cursing split the air.

'That was unwise,' murmured the Doctor. 'Now they have a focus for their malice.'

The two men on either side of the road stayed in the ruins and shadows, pacing the captor and captive. Where is the third? wondered the Doctor. Surely not lying drunk in the gutter if his two companions –

'YAAAAAH!' yelled the third man, emerging at a jog around a corner just ahead of them. Waving a hatchet, he rushed at the Doctor.

The GRU agent quickly took aim, only to have a large brick fly from the shadows, hit his hand and send the shot aside, ploughing a furrow in the mud dangerously close to the Doctor's foot. The brick was followed by the man who threw it, carrying a large sheet of corrugated tin as a crude shield. Two shots dropped him, howling in pain at a shattered rib, but they also emptied the gun.

Adopting an aikido stance, the Doctor let his demented attacker close in and begin the downward sweep of his weapon. Moving with far greater speed and strength than a man of his apparent age ought to be able to, the Time Lord grasped the other man's wrist with both hands, turned inside his arm and threw him to land, hard, on the ground. Exhaling weakly in pain, the man passed out whilst his hatchet flew to one side and clattered into the rubble of a house.

'Look out!' shouted the Doctor, warning the agent, who turned to fend off a blow from a length of metal railing. The third drunkard dropped his improvised club, turned and ran off, shouting muffled curses over his shoulder.

The agent looked hard at the Doctor.

'What? I should be impressed by you warning me?'

The Doctor returned the look with one of his own, one of considerable depth.

'Stop staring at me like that!' snapped the agent, flushing red. Off to the side the shot Russian groaned pitifully, clutching his ribs.

'If you want to help, you can get that man to the sanitarium,' said the Doctor mildly. 'I have work to do and not enough time to do it, so I can't help.'

'Take _him_? To the hospital?' said the agent in a strangled voice that expressed sheer incredulity better than a torrent of words.

'Your gun is empty, you're alone, there are creatures abroad in the snows which will kill you on sight. You can best survive by helping the rest of us.'

'I have my torch,' said the agent, waggling it. 'Infra-red. Keeps monsters at bay.'

'The batteries are nearly dead and you'd still be vulnerable to thrown objects. Now, I intend to carry on where you interrupted me – sorting out cable.'

A certain degree of risk was involved, realised the Doctor, turning his back on a man who could well attack him. In fact there was no attack. When he spared a glance backwards, the agent, with bad grace, had hauled the injured man upright and was trudging back to the town square.

The Doctor grinned. There was hope for humans in the long run; he felt positive about that.

'Now, let's be dealing with that cable.'

Rolling the new drum along the muddy, sleety street, he mused on the interruptions suffered so far. Time was critical, yet he found obstructions and distractions everywhere. Perhaps – and it couldn't be lightly dismissed – perhaps the Time Lords were intervening in their customary subtle and underplayed manner, using causality to thwart him.

Perhaps not, he concluded when the cable drum finally rolled against the doors of the Tardis and stopped.

He now had to work quickly, yet with precision. This entailed his most technically demanding work so far, ensuring that human and Gallifreyan technology integrated properly. Also, he got a replacement sonic screwdriver from the Tardis stores. For simple technical reasons his first task was to cut the cable near the Tardis doors, attaching small parabolic dishes to the separate ends inside and outside. Once he left the Tardis he could shut the doors without severing the cable; given the current circumstances, with Cadaverites prowling around, leaving the doors open would be an act of the worst folly imaginable.

Having prepared that, he cut power to the central time rotor before unlocking a floor-level access panel. After all, suffering a time-out at this point would be disastrous for himself and the town. Parsing and locating the relevant chronometric control channel, he carefully spliced in an smart-socket adaptor. Next came the cable, which he stripped of all insulation for a foot near the end, cutting it to a taper. When the tapered end was inserted into the socket, the adaptor instantly contracted and narrowed to form a hermetic seal. The Doctor tested the composite link and found it 97 effective, which was close enough to be acceptable. He was practical, not perfectionist.

Having completed the fiddly business and removed his MVD disguise, he decided to head back to the town square, where the townsfolk might need warning about the encroaching aliens. Neither of the less-disabled drunkards were visible anywhere en route.

In fact he discovered that people in the town square were well-appraised of their circumstances. A slow trickle of people had moved between the town and the roadblock to the west on the only road out of Trevilho. Once there they witnessed several dismally futile efforts to break out of the cordon; on foot, in cars or by tractor, all attempts were met with deadly force from the cordon's soldiery. A handful of refugees, disheartened by the view of dozens of bodies fallen under the cordon's gunfire, returned to Trevilho. Resignation permeated the atmosphere of the square and all around it, a quiet acceptance of their imminent mortality.

The exception, typically, was John, who, equally typically, was messing about with weapons. He had the heavy machine gun used at the mine, and at the expense of several metal files and hacksaw blades, had cut into the barrel. With a nodded greeting to the Doctor, he hit the barrel with a sledge hammer, shearing the metal off at the incision point and shortening the barrel by at least half a metre.

'You won't be able to hit much with a barrel that short,' pointed out the Doctor. The officer tapped the side of his nose.

'At the range I'll be using this, I can't miss.' He hefted the gun experimentally and cradled it in a sling made of canvas, stitched together by half-a-dozen babushkas. 'And Valentin gimmicked the other machine gun.' The trusty sharpened spade lay close to hand, noticed the Time Lord.

The Doctor spotted the megaphone and laid hold of it. People needed warning.

'Can I have your attention, please? Thank you. We need to be on the lookout for the oupirs. I have seen them moving around in the snow to the east of Trevilho. Keep your eyes open and shout out if you see anything suspicious.' As yet the sentry sitting chilled on the town hall roof hadn't seen any trace of the aliens moving closer to Trevilho. By now he estimated their numbers outside the mine down to a few dozen.

From the direction of the mining equipment factory came a muted rumble, revealed as Vassili pushing a pair of gas cylinders on a two-wheeled trolley.

'Doctor! Doctor!' he called, almost bursting with pride. 'Look at this which we built!'

The Doctor looked closer. The upright L-shaped trolley carried two cylinders of helium; over each of their release valves sat a plastic canopy the size of a tea-cup.

'I see. Actually I don't see. What are you showing me?'

Vassili beamed like a proud parent and twisted one of the valves open a notch. Instantly a hideous banshee shrieking issued from the plastic covering, gaining in pitch and volume until the Doctor felt his eardrums were being assailed by miniature hammers –

'Impressive, hey?' said Vassili. 'Those bone-white dastards don't like high-pitched sounds. This ought to make them think twice about tackling us.'

'Indeed,' agreed the Doctor, nursing his jaw and ear. 'How does it work?'

The engineer darted a look at Anya, still working to comfort the children in the town square.

'A musician gave me the reed from a flute. I wondered how to boost the signal in terms of power and thought of massive pressure. Massive pressure led to gas cylinders.'

The Doctor felt a grin forming despite himself. A slightly silly analogy came to mind.

'Vassili, I see the Russian gift for improvisation at work. Are you familiar with the Ganelin Trio? No? A jazz trio who manage to sound like a sextet. All done by improvisation. We'll beat those monsters yet!'

One of the teenaged men rescued from the mine approached the Doctor, clutching a transistor radio.

'Doctor Kuznetz,' he asked, very politely. 'I was wondering whether we could not use this radio and the loudspeaker to cause audio feedback. Comrade Bimilev reckons that high-pitched sounds will repel these creatures, so if we dangle a radio in front of the speaker it will create hideous noise.'

With a permissive gesture from the Doctor, the young man hung his radio from the handle of the loudspeaker and pressed the trigger. A caterwauling screech came from the device, making the Doctor jump.

'Sorry!' apologised the denim-clad teenager. 'I did not mean to make you jump.'

'You didn't!' exclaimed the Doctor, suddenly feeling what Archimedes felt in the bath. 'Of course! That's why they destroyed the radios!'

Avram, the young man, looked in worried surprise as The Doctor tore across the cobbles and took the steps of the town hall three at a time. The mayor and Colonel Stefan were equally surprised when The Doctor burst into the mayor's office unannounced and excited.

'Colonel! I need your radio!' said the Time Lord, grateful that the equipment had not yet been removed or destroyed. Instead it sat to the side of the room on a table.

'Eh? Who are you going to call?'

The Doctor paced over and looked at the set: a robust, functional design, capable of being carried in a backpack and sturdy enough to withstand landing with a paratrooper. Microphone, batteries, aerial, all present and correct.

'Oh, I don't intend to use it to call anyone, Colonel. You see, I finally realised what the Cadaverites were destroying radio sets for.'

His flair for the dramatic got the better of him, and the Doctor paused for effect until both the mayor and Stefan gestured for an explanation.

'The radio waves from a unit like this can cause interference with their mental powers. That is why they destroyed any radio they came across.'

Both the mayor and Stefan seemed less than impressed with this conclusion.

'So what!' said the colonel, brusquely.

The Doctor sighed.

'A broadcast from this unit or a similar one on the appropriate wavelength will effectively "jam" their ability to mentally control human beings.'

This news made both men sit up and pay attention.

'What are you waiting for!' said the mayor. 'Go ahead and jam them!'

Making a rueful face, the Doctor rubbed his chin.

'Easier said than done, Mayor. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of possible wavelengths to broadcast on.'

The civic official looked equally rueful. Colonel Stefan, on the other hand, bared his teeth in a feral grin.

'Millions, eh, Doctor? Then it should take you only minutes instead of seconds to solve the problem.' He waved at the radio. 'Take it, take it. Only hurry.'

Taking the hint, and also the radio, the Doctor left at speed. The idea of a supercharged analogue switcher was already bubbling in his mind. Time was the enemy here, time, time, time. As always there wasn't enough of it. He needed to get to work on the radio immediately.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Cadaverites Part Nine**

Captain Tybalt looked sternly at Golyubov.

'Don't start speculating. Recall the mission orders.'

The co-pilot looked out to port, making a cross noise in his throat.

'Moving at four hundred knots on vector one nine one, to proceed until crossing the Arctic Circle, and to proceed for another three hundred miles after. Orienting on Yakudno, to proceed on vector to zero six, arriving on target zone at oh six two five. Making one inspection pass, launch AS2 missile, observe detonation to confirm mission complete.'

Return home, do not discuss mission, do not reflect on civilian casualties, continued Tybalt silently. He knew his crew well enough to know that they were wondering what the hell a Soviet bomber was doing, bombing a Russian town.

There hadn't been any explanation in the briefing from Met and Ops. No, they merely gave a mechanical recount of the weather to be expected and where to fly at what height and speed. Once finished, then they could wondering. Not now, when such speculation might affect morale and performance. Bogdanov, the bombardier, had a combination of flushed face and the appearance of a cold sweat, and you could tell because his oxygen mask hung away from his face. He checked the metal clipboard with it's pre-launch protocols for the hundredth time, indicating items with a pen.

'Will you stop doing that!' growled Tybalt. 'It won't magically change just because you looked again!'

'Sorry, Captain,' muttered the bombadier.

'I'm altering course by two degrees,' announced Golyubov. 'We've picked up a wind from Finland, and I need to compensate.'

Nodding without paying a great deal of attention, Tybalt was working out the blast radius of the AS2 missile they'd be launching in a couple of hours. The estimates were thrown out slightly by detonation being below ground level, in a mining quarry from what Ops told them. Once they launched the AS2 it would travel to the target, whilst they executed a smart one hundred and eighty degree bank, gained height and put the afterburners on. Detonation would be observed by the flash, never mind orders about hanging round ground zero to wait and see if the missile warhead detonated.

'That reminds me – everyone check your helmet flash-protector.'

The flash-protector was a silvered screen that was pulled down over the helmet visor to protect the crew from the flash of a nuclear detonation. Each crew member tried in turn, Lyupanov having to use main force to drag his down.

'Just leave it down, then,' ordered Tybalt. Lyupanov was the radioman, and had nothing to do until the missile detonated, when he would transmit the codeword "Hammer" back to the airbase. Until then he could put up with a darkened view of the instrument panel in front of him.

A long way further to the south-west, Colonel Proskurov and his artillery convoy were making slower progress. They, however, had a far shorter distance to cover. On the other hand, they did have to contend with snowfalls on the road. A particularly bad one meant getting out with shovels to clear a path; there was simply no way on earth that the Colonel would allow a convoy carrying nuclear weapons to risk skidding off the road by driving through the drifts.

'How are we for time?' he asked Godunov, who was driving. The major looked at his watch and briefly looked at the cab roof whilst calculating.

'Slightly ahead of schedule, by approximately fifteen minutes.'

'Good. I want a margin for safety reasons, in case we get more obstructions, and I want to survey the firing site properly.'

The courier's orders had included an off-road site for the S-23 guns to deploy in, reached by an old logging track from the highway. Being an experienced officer, Colonel Proskurov didn't intend to blindly rely on a map nor orders drawn up by a bureaucrat in Semipalatinsk; he would damn well get down and snoop around on the snowy ground himself first. If he did deploy in that clearing then the guns would be firing at a little under maximum range, indirectly and ranging on a map.

'Perhaps we're trying to scare the Chinks, sir,' commented Godunov. 'Showing them what we've got.'

'In which case it would be wiser to use a range out in the Far East, Alma Ata or somewhere like that.'

He checked the map of Trevilho that the courier had brought. Small town, no military buildings that might be reinforced, an amorphous scatter on the tundra. They might as well make the first shell's impact point the central point of the town square, doubtless marked by a plinth with Lenin's likeness in some dramatic pose sat upon it. Would he be charged with damaging Soviet property? he wondered whimsically.

Taking up his protractors, he carefully inscribed a pencil circle on the map, centred on the town square. Four more circles at each of the cardinal points on the outskirts of Trevilho, then four more in the gaps left, then another circle over the original. Ten artillery shells, one for each circle. This pattern left small gaps in the overlay, but blast pressure would destroy anything in those areas, especially since they'd be hit ten times over.

Proskurov sighed. Not the best of days. He sent one of the motorbike escort on ahead with a radio to act as a spotter for fall of shot.

Vassili had been called in to help the Doctor "gimmick" a man-portable radio. The engineer, like most Russians, had done his national service and recognised the military radio. Quite what the stranger wanted was less clear.

'A miniature motor? And elastic bands?' replied Vassili doubtfully. 'Perhaps in a child's toy.'

'Then go and get it!' snapped the Doctor, running out of time and patience. This period of grace before the Cadaverites attacked was unexpected, and must be exploited fully. When the earnest but puzzled Russian returned to the mayor's office five minutes later with a clockwork motor and half a kilo of rubber bands from the town's junior school, they were snatched from his hands eagerly.

'Excellent!' said the Doctor, and ignored anyone else from that moment on. Finally an urgent tugging on his jacket brought him back to the present.

'Yes? What is it? Good grief, if Isembard had to put up with this level of interference -'

Colonel Stefan opened his mouth and then stopped at the mention of "Isembard".

'Who is this "Imbarsed" person? Oh – never mind, Doctor. I have heard and seen enough in the past few days to last a lifetime. What I meant to say is that the Politburo gave me an artefact before I left the Kremlin. It had been lost for at least fifteen years, until a search turned it up in the dead files. The Trevilho Plaque.'

With that, the Colonel handed over a small, flat, dull metal rectangle. One side was covered with elaborate heiroglyphics not from planet Earth, the other remained blank.

'The Trevilho Plaque, eh.'

Colonel Stefan shrugged.

'They asked if I would pass it on, Doctor. I have done so.'

The Doctor scraped the metal oblong, then tasted his finger.

'Technetium? Ytterbium? No – zirconium! This is zirconium. Thank you, Colonel. Most useful.'

Stefan shrugged. Useful or not, he didn't see what the metal oblong could do to help them. If that The Doctor thought it useful then – well, then who knew what might result.

'Pay attention at the back you bloody useless layabouts!' shouted Valentin. His best parade-ground voice came in useful here, reaching above the background hum of conversation and mechanical operation. The totally atypical content made his audience pay attention.

'This empty bottle is the basis of a simple yet potent weapon in the best Soviet tradition. The Molotov cocktail.'

A lot of nods. One man, aged about sixty and with the look of a Caucasian, gasped and looked at the floor. Valentin focussed sharply on him, wondering who the elderly character might be and why he made such a business of the cocktail preparation.

_Spain_, mouthed the pensioner, looking directly at the ex-army officer. Valentin abruptly looked at a young woman in the front row.

'Bloody hell, woman, are you trying to kill us or them! The thickener goes inside the bottle and the rag goes outside.'

He pulled the bottle from her and filled it with petrol from the large can at his feet.

'Now, watch.'

He lit the rag tied around the bottle's neck, fired it with his lighter and pitched the bottle a good fifty metres overhand. With a smack and brittle bang, the glass broke and the fuel flared up in a temporary explosive blossom.

'Anyone on the receiving end of that would be occupied in dealing with a nasty fire. Which means you can dictate terms whilst they worry about fire-extinguishers.'

The townsfolk of Trevilho managed to drain many bottles of beer, vodka, mineral water and milk, the better to fill them with diesel fuel and petrol.

And all the while, as the Russians ran to and fro with glass bottles full of fuel, the Doctor continued with his radio gimmickry in the mayor's rooms. John and Masha came to visit.

'We've got hundreds of Molotov cocktails, a giant helium-powered banshee, an electronic ear-splitter, a dum-dum machine gun, a few dozen silver bullets and sharpened shovels.,' explained John.

'Splendid,' muttered the Doctor, not paying more than the slightest attention. 'Very good. Retreat carried out splendidly. Carry on General Slim.'

John and Masha exchanged looks.

'Er – I'm not a general, nor are either of us slim,' replied John. The Time Lord looked up in surprise.

'Well of course you're not! This unit is ready for testing. What are you here for?'

Masha looked at the silver-haired stranger with a penetrating glance.

'We came here, Doctor, to tell you that we have –'

An eerie, whining, oscillating wail started overhead, quietly at first, gradually gaining strength and intensity until it rattled the teeth of anyone listening. It carried on, across the square below and to the fields beyond.

The civilian manning the phone in the foyer rang the mayor's office to pass on the warning from the siren-cranking sentry on the roof: the Cadaverites were coming, and there were hundreds of them.

'Ah. I seem to have miscalculated numbers,' muttered the Doctor, picking up the radio and heading outside. Colonel Stefan joined him.

'Your radio gadget gets it's first test when they attack us, hey?'

'Trial by fire,' agreed the Doctor. He well knew that the aliens were desperate, that there would be no quarter offered tonight. No likelihood of withstanding an assault by several hundred of the Cadaverites, either, unless his radio jammer worked. Why the long delay in attacking he didn't know, but it gave them a fighting chance of surviving until morning (he wasn't to know about the desperate and futile attempts by the aliens trapped outside the mine to construct a shield of their own).

'John – er, Comrade Izvestilnyuk!' he shouted across the square. The officer came jogging over. 'John, you need to get over to the electricity sub-station with some other people. It's almost certain that the Cadaverites will attack it and try to stop it operating.'

Understanding that without power the town square lighting wouldn't operate, John gave a smart salute and speedily laid hold of half-a-dozen resigned or reluctant volunteers. His little band of defenders left the square to set up a hundred metres away at the sub-station, cradling Molotov cocktails, a single AK47 with three silver bullets and John's cut-down machine gun. Other buildings screened them from the protective lighting in the town square, isolating them.

'Hey, room for one more?' asked a breathless and sweating Vassili, trundling his trolley of gas cylinders up to John, who looked bemusedly at the device.

'Make sure it's pointed away from us, matey.'

The Doctor felt sure that the aliens would carry out a reconaissance before attacking; know your enemy, understand what you're attacking. If they did carry out any such preparation, he missed it. Suddenly the far side of the square filled with bobbing, weaving, hissing, gesticulating monsters. No longer bone-white. No, these aliens had wrapped themselves in what looked like black bandaging – actually heavy-duty adhesive tape – and were attempting to control the humans in the town square.

On a reflex, the Doctor turned on his radio-jammer. Instantly the Russians in the square began to react to the invaders, and the Cadaverites paused in their entirety for several seconds.

Check! exulted the Doctor. Yes, the aliens had managed to protect themselves against UV radiation at the level emitted by the town lighting, but they had been taken by surprise at his radio-jammer. Nor would they last long in daylight, not with the logarithmic increase in the amount of UV radiation present when the sun came up over the horizon.

'There he is, Masters!' shrieked a human voice at the forefront of the aliens. 'The Doctor! Your enemy! Let us destroy him!'

Zelinski, of course. Zelinski, pale-faced and with eyes practically starting from their sockets, pointing a shaking hand in his direction. Zelinski, whom the Doctor thought seemed on the edge of insanity.

A chorus of hissing hatred went up from the aliens, and they charged. A few were roasted by petrol bombs thrown by Russians in the square, too few casualties to stop them.

With a despairing sideways glance the Doctor saw Colonel Stefan press the firing button on an improvised electrical circuit, detonating the home-made directional napalm bombs that John had set up on town square trees. The Colonel showed precious little emotion.

Sudden orange and red gouts of flame by the dozen leapt outwards at all angles from the trees, creating a gigantic rolling barricade of fire five hundred metres long. In duration it only lasted for a second, if that, but it drenched the advancing aliens with a fire that consumed and killed them in the space of ten seconds. A disgusting charcoal stink went up from the remains, bleached alien bone mixed with those of a single human being, roasted flesh that smelt like a charnel barbequeue. The last flames and fumes of the pyre rolled up to the heavens, leaving an equally stunned collection of humans and surviving aliens.

John and his collection of stalwart volunteers saw, felt and heard the detonation of his napalm firestorm. The town and outskirts were briefly illuminated by the blast, and Colonel Proskurov's distant motorcycle observer also witnessed it, but in his case he had no idea what caused the effect.

'Fingers crossed that's seen a lot of the pasty white swine off,' called John to the others, hoping to keep morale bouyant. 'Souvenir hunters can go to look for fried alien tomorrow morning.'

The other members of the small defensive detail were awed by the size of the explosion, and reminded John that the Cadaverites were within range.

'Anyone feeling odd?'

None of the Russians seemed to be affected by sinister alien mind control.

'Then I guess the Doctor's radio-jammer works. Okay, look sharp. If they moved against - '

A tide of dark figures moved out of the darkness against the sub-station. The soldier with the AK47 shot three with quick accurate shooting before they closed the distance. Vassili spun the valve of his sound-machine open and the head-splitting, piercing wail swept over his comrades, and the aliens. The Cadaverites staggered as if running into a wall; their precautions might have protected against visible radiation but not against the high-pitched shrieking of the artificial banshee. Taking advantage of their trouble, John opened fire with his machine gun. It's rate of fire had been speeded up with the removal of much of the barrel, and the bullets went spraying everywhere, mostly to the skies.

'Hang on!' shouted one of the Russians, producing a leather belt. He stood behind John, looped the belt over the gun muzzle and held tight. The next burst went approximately where John had aimed, since his helper dragged the gun barrel down with the belt. Aliens hit in the legs or torso fell, shrieking in hate and dismay.

The Cadaverites stood their ground for all of five seconds, paralysed by the noise of Vassili's device. John and his un-named helper managed to hit several aliens in the head. Grueome disintegration resulted when the big bullets hit, the result of their being turned into dum-dum rounds. Any alien so hit lay dead, deserted by their selfish companions.

'Spade!' shouted John, his temper now aroused. He gave up the machine gun and strode forward with the sharpened spade, decapitating an alien too slow to escape. The other fled into the night, pursued by his shouted insults.

'What is this "toilet-paper"?' asked one of the Russians of Vassili, who turned off his gas-powered banshee.

'Must be an insult in Kiev. Ha! We beat them! Take that, you alien scum! We beat you!' shouted Vassili, shaking a shaking fist after the retreating enemy.

Many of the Cadaverites were killed by the giant petrol-bomb ambush. Those that remained understood that their ability to control humans had deserted them. Their target, however, still stood; the human-constructed shield, which they wanted for their own. Since controlling the human cattle wasn't possible, they needed to kill. To kill and occupy.

The next five minutes were nightmarish for the Doctor. Never willing to kill unless his own life was threatened, he nevertheless had to endure the sight of massacre and murder around him. Cadaverites raced into the square, to be killed by petrol bombs even as they killed Russians. Avram used his loudspeaker to front a wedge of Russians armed with axes, petrol bombs and Valentin with his machine gun. They fought across the cobbles, leaving a trail of dismembered aliens behind them, intermingled with dead Russians.

An alien sprang up behind Anya, who was guarding a clutch of terrified children. The Doctor shouted a warning: too late. It made a savage stroke at her neck and the young woman fell to the ground.

I will not let this happen! said the Time Lord to himself, considering abandoning his radio-jammer as the monster advanced on the children. Nobody else was near enough to help. Yet if he left the jammer –

A dying Anya dragged herself across the cobbles, lifting a petrol-bomb in her left hand. Her right clutched around the alien's ankle. Even across the hundred metres between them the Doctor could hear her shrill voice.

'Children! Run!'

The children ran, scattering. Anya smashed the petrol-bomb against the stone cobbles of the square, clinging on with her last dying breath to the alien, which shrieked and tore ineffectually at her grip on it's ankle. A bright flame consumed them both.

A wedge of three aliens attacked the Doctor. No subtlety, no warning, they simply ran over the town square directly at him.

He managed to get his sonic screwdriver into action and dropped two of them before the third leapt at him, slashing unsuccessfully at his arm, yet catching the fabric of his sleeve and jerking the device free, to clatter over the cobbles. The hissing black-clad figure jumped at him again and the Doctor twisted to one side to push the alien as it passed, throwing the Cadaverite further than it intended to travel and off-balance entirely. Still, it recovered in seconds, circling to attack him. This time the leap was shorter and the Doctor only just fended off the slashing talons with an akido parry. He cradled his arms in a karate posture, aware that lack of sleep, ceaseless work and injury over the past days had slowed down his movements. The alien seemed to realise that he wasn't at his best.

_prepare to die, not-human!_

'I don't intend to die for several centuries, thank you very much,' replied the Doctor.

_your lifespan is measured in seconds –_

The alien leapt at him, forcing him to throw his arms up in a parry, and yet it managed to fall to earth only just in front of him, kicking out with a foot that hit his left calf. Already off-balance, he fell heavily onto his back, and the alien pounced to straddle him.

_Yes! We may yet triumph!_ gloated the alien, raising it's taloned right hand for a disembowelling sweep.

The blow never fell. Instead a small uniformed figure hit the alien in a diving tackle, clutching it around the upper torso and knocking it free from the Doctor. The twosome rolled across the cobbles, the Cadaverite trying to slash with its talons. The smaller figure produced a pistol, which it pressed against the alien's temple, and fired repeatedly. Eventually the hammer fell on an empty chamber and the Doctor helped the man to his feet.

'Colonel Stefan.' The officer snorted a weak laugh in greeting.

'We meet again. This time I can return the favour of the boiler-room.'

And suddenly the fighting stopped. If any aliens remained at large, they abandoned any attack on the town.

'Have we won?' asked Vassili. All sounds of violence had ceased.

'Maybe,' said John. He rapped the blade of his spade against the ground. 'I don't trust these leeches. They may try to come from a different direction.' He appointed two men to remain on guard at the sub-station while he and Vassili went to see what had occurred in the town square.

Doctor Pavel and volunteer nurses were about their business in the square when John arrived. The stink of burnt flesh, petrol and blood hung over everything.

'All over bar the shouting?' asked John of the Doctor, whom he found shepherding a flock of distraught children. 'Wasn't Anya looking after these kids?'

The Doctor silently and grimly nodded at the twisted, carbonised corpses of Anya and the alien she had killed. John felt a shock that travelled all the way down to his shoes.

'She stopped it from killing the little ones in her charge,' said Colonel Stefan, coughing as he inhaled smoke fumes. 'Brave young woman.'

'Killing the children?' choked John, barely able to speak for sudden rage. 'Killing the children!' Words failed him and he broke the spade handle across his knee.

A grimy Zhadov, cradling his cherished folding-stock rifle, stopped to point at the long wall of roasted aliens.

'We got that traitor Zelinski. His bones are in amongst that lot,'he said to John, with a degree of relish.

'I wonder,' mused the Doctor, pursing his lips in the trademark questioning way he had. He looked sideways at John. 'You and Zelinski set up those fire-bombs, didn't you?'

'Er – yes, we did. He must have known about the trap. He must have known and still led the Cadaverites into it. How could they not know it was a trap?'

Zhadov rubbed the soot on his bald pate.

'That's right. They ought to have known what he knew.'

'Perhaps he found a way to prevent them from controlling him,' mused the Doctor, closer than he knew; a search of Zelinski's corpse would have revealed silver bullets clutched in each hand.

'What's that!' exclaimed the Colonel. A faint shouting could be heard from the direction of the sub-station. John and Vassili ran back the way they had come, followed by a considerably slower Colonel Stefan, to discover their two sentries lying dead outside the building, and the sound of metallic smashing inside. Driven by a rage that blocked out rational thought, John burst inside, to discover three aliens busy trying to destroy the transformer. One died on the spot as a sharpened spade clove it's head in two, a second was staked in the heart by the broken handle. The third whirled round to discover the big human dubbed "The Killing One" had arrived, and that it had arrived undetected thanks to the camouflage of fury. The alien squealed in alarm, a sound cut off as it's throat was crushed by two big hands that exerted tremendous force and wrenched it's skull clear of the spinal column.

Vassili came in with his sonic banshee, only to see the lifeless corpse of a dead alien being thrown into a corner.with great force by Izvestilnyuk. The Ukranian sat on the floor to calm down for a few seconds.

'Too late,' he said. 'They've been and smashed up the transformer.' He wept bitter tears for the space of three breaths. 'And they killed Anya. The girl we rescued from the mine.'

Vassili hauled the other man to his feet.

'She rescued the children, Comrade. She couldn't have done that if you hadn't rescued her.'

He turned his attention to the transformer, which looked pretty battered, panels ripped off and wiring yanked out. Sparks occasionally sputtered outwards from the vandalised controls.

'Doesn't look good. How long do we have?'

'About sixty minutes,' said the Doctor, arriving to see exactly what damage the aliens had wrought. 'John, get to the town hall, round up everyone you can see and get them under the shield. Don't sit there feeling sorry for yourself, man! There's more work to be done!'

A snarling, muttering John left, hoping to come across some live aliens to work off his temper upon.

'Right. Let's get to work on this,' announced the Doctor to Vassili. 'First priority is to provide power to the shield. Can the transformer do that?'

Vassili pointed out where wiring had been ripped out of the plant.

'Not without those wires there.'

'Get me those rubber gloves, then.' For twenty long minutes the Doctor toiled away at the wiring, using his sonic screwdriver to loosen and lengthen wires that remained intact and functional. Bypassing, adapting and repairing other smashed panels and controls took another twenty minutes.

Evgeniy came in to see if he could help, having been forced to leave the town hall when the word came round to evacuate.

'You can cross your fingers!' said the Doctor, checking connections and turning the power off temporarily, in order to connect the cable leading to the shield grid in the town square. Once that had been safely done he turned the power on again, only for a fuse to pop loudly.

'Damn!' he muttered. Evgeniy checked over the bulk of the transformer, located the fuse box and flicked it open.

'Ah. A bit of a problem here, Doctor.' He indicated the fuse, which had flicked open. 'This type of fuse will flick off after you reset it, when the current comes on again.'

'Then we need to keep it shut,' replied the Doctor.

'If you do that, Doctor, then the other fuses will blow.'

A very annoyed Doctor clenched his fists in consternation. They were nearly out of time! Given time and resources he could easily solve this problem –

'I have a solution,' coughed Colonel Stefan, hanging around the doorway to the sub-station. 'You get to the square and I will hold the fusewires in place.'

The Doctor stared at him. Colonel Stefan stared back. Staying in the sub-station, well outside the protective shield, was a sentence of death and both men knew it.

'Get going,' snapped the colonel to Evgeniy and Vassili, who edged out and left.

'Colonel - '

'Don't start,' wheezed the officer, leaning against the wall. He took a hand away from underneath his left armpit, exposing a great tear in the material that showed a gaping wound underneath, still leaking blood. The material underneath was sodden with gore. He smiled sadly at the Doctor.

'Not long for this world, am I? Besides, I don't think I'd like the future and what it brings. Get going. And you can pass on three words to your large and aggressive young companion – "Loyally I Serve".'

'Done,' agreed the Doctor.

The colonel leaned wearily against the transformer and pressed the fuses into place. With a last glance goodbye the Doctor raced off, into the town square.

'Come on, John, we need to get to the Tardis.'

'We do?' exclaimed John, waving a hasty goodbye to various people in the square. The Doctor estimated that numbers had dwindled to no more than two hundred out of the eight or nine hundred there originally.

'Yes, and how long do we still have?'

'Minutes,' gasped John as they raced up to the Tardis.

The blue box stood serenely amidst the rubble and snow, a cable trailing up to it, ending in a miniature dish.

'Don't step on that, and watch out for the one inside.'

Once safely inside the Doctor turned on the scanner and focussed it towards the town square. He activated the time rotor and tapped in a set of co-ordinates, waiting and watching.

'Fire!' shouted Colonel Proskurov, cupping his hands to shout, and keeping his mouth wide to equalize the blast pressure. Godunov pulled the lanyard firmly and the big gun boomed, firing the shell towards Trivelho. The firing's shockwave knocked snow from firs around the clearing and sent echoes rolling between the treetrunks.

Lipinov, the gunlayer, timed the fall of shot on his wristwatch, clicking it to a stop when the forward observer called in.

'Adjust for a fifty metre overshoot, traverse half a degree left,' sang out the radioman. Lipinov made the corrections very carefully. His skill meant they were minor corrections indeed.

The Colonel gestured to the stoney-faced Spetznatz troopers in the GAZ, who brought over the S1 shell on a cradle. He kept them there whilst his fingers, stiff with cold, shook out one of the special fuses and screwed it into place.

'Load,' he instructed them and they staggered away to the gun breech. Lipinov, Byelbin and Godunov loaded the shell in, then the propellant charges, then closed the breechblock.

'Fire!' shouted the Colonel.

The first shell to fall on Trevilho was a straightforward high-explosive shell, a forty kilogramme round. As such it impacted at the near edge of the protective shield, creating a brief flash, no sound and very little awareness amongst the Russians below. Above the shield, the round's explosive arrival was immediately obvious to the watching artillery observer, creating a distant thunder and a plume of smoke.

The second round that fell was the first S1 nuclear round. The brief bright flash was all that Colonel Stefan saw, an actinic light that consumed him without pain or fear in an instant too quick to be measured.

John and the Doctor saw the first pico-second of the shell's impact on the shield, a glowing burst of shatteringly bright light, before the Tardis whisked itself away. Not before John saw the whole assembled populace in the square vanish. For a second he goggled in horror and surprise.

'Doctor!' he gasped. 'Doctor – they've gone!'

'Hmm?' replied the Doctor, engrossed in reading and manipulating dials. 'Yes, yes, I suppose they have,' he replied in an vague tone.

'What happened!' exclaimed John, alarmed and worried. 'Were they vapourised? Did the atomic explosion kill them?'

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the Tardis' controls and straightened up, looking at John with peculiar intensity.

'"Vapourised"? "Killed"? Good grief, John, what do you think of me! I did not help to rescue these people merely to get them killed.' He turned on the Tardis scanner, rotated it around and focussed it upon the town square. An hallucinatory picture combining a smoking crater, the energy field and an atomic explosion appeared.

'About twenty years, I should judge,' he said quietly. 'I didn't tell you or the Russians the complete truth, John, mostly because I didn't think any of you would believe or understand it.'

A silent and scornful look was his reply. The Doctor changed tack.

'If those people in the town square survived an attack by nuclear artillery, do you think the Soviet Union would have left them alone? Do you think they would have been allowed to live, let alone enjoy liberty? No. Their lifespan would have been measured in weeks, if not days. What would be the point of saving lives today to have them die tomorrow.'

The Doctor gestured at the empty square.

'I solved that problem. The survivors in Trevilho town square will not have to worry about Soviet persecution.'

A gesture from the Time Lord directed his view to the scanner.

'The intercalation between the atomic shell arriving, its detonation and the departure of the Tardis all played a part. What? You didn't realise that the cable leading here meant interfering with the timelines of the people in the town square?'

'I can barely make sense of what you're saying,' replied John.

The Doctor sighed. He explained: the power from Trevilho's own electricity supply created an electromagnetic shield that prevented the first shell from doing any damage.

The second, atomic, shell was another matter entirely, able to destroy all beneath it. Which it would have done if the Doctor's energy grid hadn't used the energy release of the detonation to power the shield, creating a positive feedback effect and preventing any injury being inflicted on the people underneath. The Tardis' cable with it's interfering time vector hysteresis produced the final effect – a transfer across space and time.

'For a duration of pico-seconds,' said the Time Lord, looking well-satisfied. John looked unconvinced.

'A force field requires vast amounts of energy,' pontificated the Doctor. 'To deal with a single shell's kinetic and chemical energy took the entire output of the town's power supply. To repel a nuclear explosion takes more energy than the entire output of European Russia.'

His audience remained silent. The Doctor had a cocky edge to his voice that meant he wasn't going to admit being defeated.

'So I designed the shield to use the energy of the nuclear explosion itself, in a positive feedback effect, to move the people.'

'Move them where?'

the Doctor looked conspiratorial.

'Not "where", rather "when". Why else would I need to use the Tardis? Thanks to that cable running from here, conveying hysteresis vector data, anyone under the shield when that weapon detonated will have been thrown forward in time.'

Blinking in surprise, John looked at the scanner, which merely displayed shifting monochromatic displays.

'How far forward in time?' he asked, anticipating with some dread an answer like "forty five minutes" or "twelve hours".

'Hmm. Let's see. The link was maintained for approximately eighty pico-seconds.' He stroked his chin whilst calculating. 'That's about eight hundred-thousandths of a second.'

'Oh, great!' exclaimed John. 'What a big difference that will make!'

The Doctor tutted disapprovingly.

'Not a linear relationship, John, and the differential was boosted by the ergs from the nuclear explosion. I would make a best-guess estimate at twenty years forward.'

Gradually John realised how clever the Time Lord had been. Shifting the survivors into the future meant not being killed by fallout or residual radiation, not after that long. Given that there were two hundred survivors, the Soviet government couldn't ignore them, but that few people weren't a threat to political stability.

'So everyone under the shield got moved to 1989? Wow. And they're all safe?'

The Doctor's eyes twinkled mischievously.

' "safe" is a relative term, but I think they have a good chance of surviving. I have to confess being apprehensive about saving even that many people out of the town population.' Seeing John looked puzzled he explained one of his underlying worries. 'The Time Lords. My own people. They take a keen interest in anyone who meddles about in time and might well have arrived to investigate what you and I were up to. All I can conjecture is that projecting those people into the future didn't impact on the time-space continuum in any great way – or I was intended to save them all along.'

John let out a long sigh of relief.

'Well, that's that, then. Let's go home.' His bouyant tone trailed off into a more suspicious one.

'I'm afraid that isn't possible yet. I still have unfinished business to deal with.'

The second S1 round had been aimed at the western edge of the town, but overshot slightly, impacting near the outskirts of the ragged encampment of refugees. None survived. Several members of the cordon were injured by the blast, despite being pulled back three hundred metres into trenches. After all ten shells had been fired the town looked as though giant rollers had worked over it. Nobody outside the shield survived, not even those hiding in reinforced cellars.

'Strange, how that first S1 shell didn't detonate properly,' commented Colonel Proskurov, still slightly awed at the giant mushroom aggregated from the smaller ones, that now hung like a funeral pall over the town's ruins. Godunov didn't reply, being more concerned with watching a jet aircraft circling high up.

'Looks like we have observers, Colonel,' he said. A dark speck detached itself from the jet, falling freely at first, and then developing the contrail of an engine at work. Proskurov and Godunov watched for long enough to determine the missile's heading: outside Trevilho to the east, at the quarry workings marked on the secure map.

'Colonel,' said Godunov slowly, a feeling of creeping unease coming over him. 'D'you think that's a nuclear-armed missile?'

'Devil take them, I bet it is!' snapped the Colonel. He turned and ran to the towing vehicles, the motor bikes and BRDMs where the crews were sitting, sipping hot drinks out of thermos flasks.

'Out! Get into the lee of these vehicles and lie down – NOW!' he bellowed, following his own instructions. Gunners and escorts didn't pause to see why the Colonel had gone mad; they jumped and ran and dived with admirable speed.

'Ow!' yelped one gunner. 'That's hot!'

'You spilled my soup, you clumsy - ' began another man, to be silenced as an incredibly short bright flash cut into the dawn around them. Almost a minute later came a rustling in the pines as they bowed under the shockwave, accompanied by the rolling bass thunder of a nuclear detonation.

'On your feet, double time,' shouted Godunov. 'Come on, do you want to go home to your wives glowing like lightbulbs!'

The small detachment went to work hurriedly, hitching up the artillery pieces and driving back onto the road with all the speed they could muster. The escorts, aware that they didn't have any nuclear warheads to shepherd, were rapidly disappearing into the distance when the gunners reached the road.

Proskurov stopped briefly to clamber onto the cab roof, looking backwards at the enormous column of smoke and fire climbing into the heavens beyond the smoke from his own gun's efforts. Not a religious man, he nevertheless found his lips moving in a silent prayer.

He climbed back into the cab, sombrely silent for a minute.

'Come on, Felip, get us out of here,' he commanded.

The Doctor looked at the scanner, then back at John, and again, with considerable annoyance, at Masha. He had discovered her when changing into his characteristic Edwardian cape and frock coat.

'I did begin to wonder why you never turned up in the town square,' muttered John. 'Daft bint.'

The unfamiliar Arabic didn't appeal to Masha. She might have gotten angry or upset if the circumstances had been more normal.

'So. While I was working on the time rotor and my attention was elsewhere, you sneaked in to keep me company in the "strange blue box".'

Mutely, Masha nodded.

'You were startled to find it bigger inside than out. You hid behind a door over there, then found you couldn't leave to follow me once the external doors were closed again. Am I right?'

Once again a silent nod.

The Doctor sighed. Really, humans could be so irritating at times! He remembered when Zoe tried to sneak into and hide in the Tardis, a memory that brought a hastily-suppressed smile to his face. He needed to maintain a steely exterior resolve.

'We are not going to go far. Only to the mine, which by now will probably have been hit by a nuclear missile.'

'Oh!' squeaked Masha.

'Since I have altered history in such a manner as to permit the Cadaverites to survive that nuclear explosion, I need to make amends.'

'How do you intend to do that?' asked John. The Doctor shrugged

'I have no idea!'

Deep within the cavern, in a rock cleft where scattered items of clothing lay, the Tardis materialised. Masha recognised it on the scanner instantly; the cleft where she and Anya had been kept prisoner to tend to the Cadaverite's victims. A collection of small rocks and dust lay over the floor, sure evidence that the nuclear missile had been shaking the cavern's foundations.

'What do we do now?' asked John, peering out of the doors to the cavern beyond.

The Doctor looked back over his shoulder.

' "We" do not do anything. I shall go forth on my own, thank you. No, John, I cannot trust you to remain calm in the presence of these aliens. Nor can you conceal your mental activity.' Before he left Masha pressed the silver knife into his hands.

'Take it. It can't do any harm and it might help.'

A sulking John remained in the Tardis, keeping a wary eye on Masha.

'He'd better not get into trouble, then, without you and me to keep an eye on him.'

The Doctor found moving silently to be difficult, since the floor was covered with bits of rubble. Every footstep seemed to grate and echo around the chambers, until his movement was gradually concealed by the ceaseless padding of unclad alien feet. Cautiously, he peered around a corner, to see a column of Cadaverites walking past with armfuls of rubble.

'Of course! Removing the fallen roof so they can get outside!' he whispered. How could he deal with so many creatures? And, just as important, how quickly could he manage to stop them? Given their numbers and diligence, it wouldn't take many hours to remove the fallen roof, prop it up and get access to the mines. Once in the mine they had far less to fear from the intelligent cavern lining, and they could once more emerge into the world outside.

The shift of aliens moved away to dump their final loads of rubble and didn't return, giving the Doctor an opportunity to sneak out into the main cavern. His problem remained, as ever, trying to prevent any aliens escaping.

'I wonder – that cavern roof,' he said quietly, noticing long narrow fissures in the ceiling, possibly the result of the explosion outside transmitting a shearing force to the walls. With some difficulty he climbed up the side wall and thrust his sonic screwdriver into the widest crack he could find, and turned up the power to full.

A grating crack and a distinct shudder in the rock rewarded his efforts. Uninterrupted, he might well have succeeded in creating a very considerable rockfall. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Horribly strong hands closed about his ankles and pulled, making him fall heavily to the cavern floor and before he could even sit up a crowd of Cadaverites laid hold of him. The sonic screwdriver lay on the floor until a vengeful alien stamped on it.

_The non-human! Captured again._

_Kill him! Kill him!_

_No – take him to the Greater Will._

_Interrogate then exterminate!_

Amidst a clutch of gleeful aliens, the Doctor was dragged along and back to the familiar council place, where the Greater Will members looked down on him again. The ten of them exhibited all the vicious amusement of their previous encounter.

_So you came back to us, not-human_

_Thank you for your inspiration in collapsing the cavern roof_

_So welcome! Now we are safe from human interference._

_Do not worry, not-human. You will not be troubled by our presence for long._

A chorus of hissing laughter greeted that last mental communication.

'You know, I think you are some of the most repellent creatures I have ever met, including the Daleks and the Cybermen,' replied the Doctor, trying to sound nonchalant. A guard standing behind delivered a punch to his neck, forcing him headlong.

_Yes, you will not be here for long_

_But that is no reason not to make your time here exquisitely unpleasant_

_You shall be converted also, the better to serve us_

'That won't work. As you pointed out, I'm not human,' replied the Doctor, with a touch of sarcasm in his reply.

_Maybe not, but your suffering will be _most_ amusing to watch_

The Doctor shook his head in mingled wonder and dismay. No wonder the civlised Karausians sought to expel these criminally insane monsters! He didn't really fear conversion – at the worst he would re-generate, at best contract a severe infection requiring anti-biotics to treat.

_How did you get here, not-human_

The question the Doctor dreaded them asking, one reason he'd been provoking them to stop them wondering how a single person managed to get into the very bottom level of the mines and the cavern itself. He suddenly went limp, taking his guard by surprise, and snatched Avtandil's silver knife from an inner pocket, slashing it around him in a wide arc. The tip caught the guard under the chin. The alien shrieked once and died. The Doctor turned immediately and hurled the knife at the members of the Greater Will, catching one a glancing blow on his calf. Predictably, the alien collapsed and died on the spot.

Such effrontery bemused the Greater Will for a second, long enough for the Doctor to turn and run.

He didn't get very far. A fist-sized rock came spinning out of the darkness and knocked him to the floor. The very next instant he went down under a pile of scratching, punching aliens.

_Do not kill him._

_At least, not yet_

_Tie him up!_ _Tie him up! We will consider a suitable punishment!_

A reeling, bleeding and severly scuffed Doctor was dragged away to the terraces where a few days ago he had witnessed hundreds of humans being unwillingly transformed into aliens. The stoney tiers were now deserted. Accompanied by his guards, the Doctor was hauled up a flight of steps to a sweeping row of empty stone biers.

One alien captor struck the stone with a long metal rod, ramming it upright into the granite. At least two metres remained sticking out of the stone, and the guards tied the Doctor to this improvised post. They all turned to stare at him in unison.

_Your end will be slow_

_And painful._

Very_ painful._

'Not good conversationalists, are you?' jested the Doctor with a lightness of tone he didn't feel. 'I may not recommend this establishment to Cook's Tours, you know.'

A final malice-laden hiss and they were gone. One sentry remained at the foot of the terrace. The Doctor supposed a sentry was needed to prevent any vengeful Cadaverite from disembowelling him in retaliation for killing one of the Greater Will, and not because there would be anyone happening by to rescue him.

A Cadaverite walked past the sentry after a whispered discussion and up the stone steps, stalking determinedly up to the Doctor.

'Hsst,' it said in an undertone. 'I've come to rescue you.'

The secret emergency hotline between the Finnish and Swedish Prime Ministers had been established in 1957, a year after the Soviet Union demonstrated how it treated internal dissent in it's empire - crushing the government of Imre Nagy by naked military force. The line had been used infrequently: when the Berlin Wall had been erected in 1961; when the Velvet Revolution in Prague had been crushed in 1967 - once again by naked military force; when the Israelis transformed the map of the Middle East, again in 1967. The line's rationale was simple – it allowed the Finns to inform a neutral neighbour if they were ever under pressure from their larger, definitely not-neutral neighbour to the east. It gave the Swedes a form of information-buffer, just in case the tanks and planes of the Soviet North-Western Front ever began to move westwards.

Today it served as a conduit for the Finnish Prime Minister to tell his Swedish counterpart of the mysterious and dangerous events taking place only eighty kilometres from the Russo-Finnish border. Actually telling via Matti Pellonpaa, the interpreter who spoke Swedish (and Russian, and English, and French too).

'That's right, Tage,' said Prime Minister Holkeri, via Matti. 'The University thought it might be an earthquake, except the shock-waves were far too regular. Ninety seconds apart. Plus a much bigger one that came five minutes later.' This took the experienced Pelonpaa no longer to translate and say that it took the Prime Minister. On the other end of the line, a liverish and ill-at-ease Tage Erlander paid full attention and thought hurriedly.

'Why the hell would they do that? If those _are_ nuclear explosions then the fallout will get carried over this way. What are they playing at!'

'You tell me,' replied Holkeri. 'I've got the Civil Defence head wanting to declare a state of emergency and a brace of generals who want to mobilise for war! Oh – wait a minute. I've got news from the police.'

A hum remained on the line whilst Holkeri read and rustled a piece of paper. Finally he finished and resumed the conversation.

'A party of hunters out near the Russian border reported hearing and seeing ten explosions, and let me quote this "of a magnitude so great that they could only be atomic in nature". The police say the hunters were witless with fright, not trying to hoax them. What do you think of that, eh?'

Erlander rubbed his sweating brow.

'We need to make representation to those Russian rascals. And why not call NATO in Brussels, also? We can pass the information on to them, and twist those Soviet bastard's tails at the same time.'

Valentin straightened his spine and relaxed his shoulders. The fact that he was able to meant he was still alive, despite circumstances. He remembered a similar event in February 1945 when a Nazi anti-tank gun put an armour-piercing shell through the glacis of his T34 outside Budapest, sending sparks flying everywhere, smashing the engine to scrap yet not touching a single one of the crew.

'If this is heaven, then you are an ugly angel,' announced Avtandil, standing next to him.

'What! Watch your tongue, you impudent young rascal!'

Valentin cast around, trying to see what lay around him. He could only remember that first explosive artillery shell, and then the second one that sent a cascade of light over the shield –

'Where the bedazzled hell of motherless whores are we!' exclaimed a male voice over to the left, followed by a meaty smack and an admonition not to swear in front of the child.

Avtandil checked to see that Avtandil was all present, both arms, legs, head, internal organs functioning as best they could. Heart beating a little fast. Apparently Avtandil was perfectly okay. He looked around, noticing that the telephone pylons had all disappeared. So had the town. What lay beyond a fifty metre circle centered on the town square was greenery, humped and lumped where the various buildings of the town might have been. A magpie cawed off in the shrubbery.

Evgeniy came over, staring out across the fresh landscape beyond the distorted cobbles that lay beneath their feet.

'Av – Avtandil. Tell me we are still alive.'

Avtandil slapped the other man on the back.

'We certainly are, Boss! Alive and kicking! God in heaven, did I ever dream of seeing this day!'

Evgeniy pointed out across the grass and weeds.

'Those bushes – that kind of growth takes years to accumulate. Years!'

Behind them an argument was taking place.

'I need to report in,' blustered a stranger. 'To find a phone or radio.' Misha, the weaselly little man (small but savage), pointed a sub-machine gun from the Great Patriotic War at him.

'You put The Doctor in trouble, I cut you in two. It's that simple.'

Doctor Pavel, looking as if he'd drunk a bottle of Stolichnaya in thirty seconds flat, came up to the pair of them.

'Gentlemen. Gentlemen. Can either of you explain why my wonderful German watch now says that the year is 1989?'

The group of two hundred and twenty three people were left alone for only half an hour before helicopter patrols of the MVD noticed them and called in to headquarters for instructions. The MVD headquarters call went all the way up to the top of the Politburo, where Premier Gorbachov found another reason for perestroika.

'How far in the future do you come from?' asked Masha.

'Not far. 1975. Well, that's where I come from. The Doctor – who knows how far in the future he comes from. Plus, he's not from round here. Not a human.'

Masha pursed her lips and nodded sombrely.

'He's a wizard. Just like my grandma told me: a wizard. He can see the future, he can create powerful forces by his hand's work, he can divine the infinite from a grain of sand. He has a heart of stone and a heart of gold, he is blessed with the curse of thirteen lives.'

John felt his jaw sag a little while his eyebrows rose. According to UNIT's resident sawbones, Harry Sullivan, the Doctor did indeed have two hearts. From occasional hints dropped to various companions (especially AB Benjamin Jackson) and interpreted, the Doctor had potentially another ten different bodily incarnations to run, whilst still in his third.

'How – how on earth did you know that!' he asked, faltering slightly.

Masha looked at him with disconcerting force.

'Am I not the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter?'

The Doctor looked hard indeed at the Cadaverite, noticing that it didn't really look like a Cadaverite. Naked and bone-white, yes, with long talons, yes, but – the body was that of a human, a woman in her twenties at a guess. A ponytail of pure white hair survived at the nape of her neck. Her face seemed nearly human, the eyes definitely so, with a warmth a Cadaverite would never know. Could this be a ploy by the Greater Will, part of their plan to punish him?

'You don't recognise me?' asked the human-alien. She turned her face to one side, revealing a livid red triangular weal along her neck. 'You saved my soul, Doctor, when you pressed that knife against my skin.'

Dimly, he recalled vaulting up the stone steps to render a Cadaverite victim unconscious, and pressing Avtandil's silver knife against her neck.

'They don't quite know what to make of me. I look like one of them but on the inside I'm still Katarina Evdokia. Now, stay still and I'll release you.'

Whilst she sought to break the bonds, something metallic and heavy clattered in the Doctor's pocket against the steel pole.

The Trevilho plaque! He remembered being given the piece of metal by Colonel Stefan, deciding that it was made of zirconium and leaving it in his pocket. With his hands free, he pulled it out and looked at it, one side blank, one side covered in alien script.

Written in Karausian, which he couldn't read.

'What's that!' hissed Katarina Evdokia through thin lips. 'It burns! It glows! What is it?'

The Doctor hesitated before answering. The sentry at the base of the tier was beginning to stir, getting edgy about both prisoner and visitor.

'It was left here by the gaolers of these creatures. Nobody on Earth can read the inscription.'

Katarina looked at the metallic oblong as if mesmerised.

'I can,' she murmured. 'Replicative absorption gone wrong. _ I _can read the letters of fire.'

The Doctor offered it to her and she took it, holding the metal delicately. Their sentry suddenly became alert and twisted to look at them, darting up the stone stairs three at a time, shrieking a warning to his distant brethren. He came on, rushing at the Doctor. This was unwise, as the released Time Lord used the steel pole to execute a flawless _jao dai_, knocking the alien senseless.

Across the entire cavern a great hissing went up from the aliens. The sudden tramp of many hundreds of feet became obvious.

'I think maybe we need to leave now,' said the Doctor, looking at Katarina, who looked at the plaque with a variety of ecstasy. She began to read the Karausian script, declaiming in proud loud tones, and the intelligent cavern lining began to pulse in response. Katarina finished reading with a defiant shout, hurling the plaque into the ranks of several hundred Cadaverites who were advancing on the twosome with deadly intent.

'Get down!' shouted the Doctor, suddenly realising what would happen. He knocked Katarina to the floor and covered her with his cape, knowing that the gigantic ultra-violet pulse to follow would grill him like a chicken in a rotisserie.

The anticipated wash of violent energy didn't come. Instead there was an insistent thrumming of energy at a very low level. The Doctor opened his eyes to see the intelligent cavern lining glowing with a lemon yellow in pulses of three seconds duration.

There was still the onrushing horde of Cadaverite killers.

Actually they seemed to have rather lost the killer part of their nature, he decided, looking at the collection of confused and wandering aliens. None of them were moving towards him or Katerina.

'Can I get up now?' asked a muffled voice.

'Oh, I beg your pardon,' exclaimed the Doctor, collecting the folds of his cape and allowing Katarina to emerge. 'Sorry. I thought we were about to be bombarded by a giant energy wave.'

Katarina shook her head and looked all around her.

'We were. We were, but not by the sort you imagined.'

Curiosity struck the Doctor.

'What was on that plaque you read out – did you understand it?'

Katarina nodded.

'Yes. Oh yes indeed. To paraphrase – "In case of emergency read this Conscience Catalyser out loud".'

For the space of a heartbeat the Doctor stood, amazed. The Karausians, civilised and intelligent, humane and forbearing, had left humanity with a method of dealing with their insane offspring. Simply read out the instructions enclosed, and the cavern lining would embed conscience by direct mental transfer.

'I should have known, you know,' he said to Katarina. 'Too clever and thoughtful to leave this world with a problem that didn't have a solution.' He looked over the Cadaverites, who were assembling in a great circular formation in the cavern. 'And that's where they will stay until they expire, thanks to the newly-acquired consciences they have.'

'Can I come with you?' asked Katarina in a small voice. The Doctor nodded, only half-listening, so taken was he with the Karausian's determination not to allow the Cadaverites to prevail.

'Here,' he said, offering his cape to cover her nudity. 'Let's get back to the Tardis.'

Masha, whom he might have felt would have least appreciated a naked, half-alien stranger, actually took the younger woman under her wing.

'Come, come, we'll find you clothes somewhere in this magic box. Besides, you can't wander around under the eyes of young men half-naked,' and she winked at John, who diplomatically found the Tardis scanner vastly interesting.

'What happens to the people you sent twenty years into the future?' he asked the Doctor.

'That,' replied the Doctor, 'Is a tale for another day.'

'And why didn't those alien rascals simply give their tricksy cousins a conscience in the first place?' asked Masha five minutes later. She presented Katarina in a short floral dress and a headscarf. 'Then none of this would have happened.' The young girl – easier to think of her that way than a human-alien hybrid – twirled on one foot and explained.

'That's not how the Karausians behaved. The prisoners were left to try and come to a realisation by themselves of their sins. Obviously that didn't work, and I don't think anyone expected the prisoners to still be alive after so many hundreds of years.'

The Doctor kept his own counsel. He liked to think that the threat from the Cadaverites was over. Of course there was no way of knowing if any other surviving alien groups lay hidden in subterranean caverns anywhere else. Just one of life's imponderables.

UNIT UK HQ

Aylesbury

Buckinghamshire

1974

Two weeks later, Lieutenant Walmsley caught the Doctor in his lab.

'Success!' he crowed, waving a bit of paper. 'My monograph was accepted and graded. I'm now on permanent UNIT UK strength.'

'I'm so glad for you,' murmured the Doctor drily. Meeting the officer again jogged his memory. 'By the way, Colonel Stefan told me to pass on a greeting to you. What was it now? – oh, yes – "Loyally I Serve". Does that make any sense to you? Oh. I see it does.'

Lieutentant Walmsley felt as if he'd been punched. "Loyally I Serve" was the regimental motto of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, the old unit he had been transferred from. How the hell did a Russian officer know to say that to him?

'Having kept them here for two weeks, I am now going to take Masha and Katarina back to Russia. Would you care to come along for the ride?'

John backed off hastily.

'No fear! I know what happens when you take off in that thing and I'm not getting a roasting from the Brig again.'

The Doctor swept into the police box with a broad smile and a "Do svdniya!".


End file.
